"California Mission" Style Interior
1946
Medium
watercolor, graphite, pen and ink, and gouache on paper
Dimensions
sheet: 56.5 × 77.8 cm (22 1/4 × 30 5/8 in.)
Classification
Index of American Design
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Albert Lewin
Accession Number
1947.1.4
Art Historical Context
Step into the sun-drenched elegance of Perkins Harnly's *California Mission Style Interior* (1946), a watercolor, graphite, pen and ink, and gouache on paper measuring 22¼ × 30⅝ inches. Created as part of the Index of American Design—a ambitious Federal Art Project under the Works Progress Administration (WPA)— work meticulously documents the distinctive aesthetic of California's historic missions, blending Spanish Colonial influences with American regionalism. Harnly, a skilled illustrator known for his precise, almost photographic depictions, employed layered techniques to evoke the texture...
About the Artist
Perkins Harnly · 1901–1986
Perkins Harnly was born on October 14, 1901, on a cattle ranch in the rugged plains of Ogallala, Nebraska—the same year Queen Victoria died, an irony that foreshadowed his lifelong obsession with Victorian opulence. Leaving behind the stark Midwest, he ventured to Los Angeles in 1922, spending six years there before settling in New York City in 1928. There, Harnly studied at the School of Interior...