Eternal Sunshine

IN 1903, CALIFORNIA officially adopted the poppy as its state flower. That might seem like a trivial thing, but the vivid yellow-orange blossom was a key visual element in a vigorous publicity campaign that the Sunshine State was waging at the time, trying to attract moneyed tourists and permanent settlers from the East. Not coincidentally, around that time, the California landscape painter Granville Redmond (1871–1935) assigned the California poppy a central role in his iconography, and the flower—often paired with the complementarily-colored blue lupine—would remain an instantly recognizable element in his work throughout the rest of his career, to the point of becoming his trademark.

Of course, there is more to Redmond than poppies, as visitors to the retrospective exhibition of his work at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento can see for themselves. “Granville Redmond: The Eloquent Palette,”