CHARLES GARFIELD TRACY

Charles Garfield Tracy was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1881. Little documentation describing his upbringing or education is available although he later became known as an accomplished artist while working as a motion picture director and vaudeville actor. Tracy was married to Rhea Lucile Snow, a member of the Ladder Day Saint’s church in Utah and the daughter of the church’s fourth president. The couple were married in Utah in 1918 and lived in Salt Lake City until the early 1920s, when they moved to Southern California after the birth of their first child. Living in Manhattan Beach, they were both active in early Hollywood vaudeville projects as actors and writers.

Tracy’s paintings include a range of subject matter, from California seascapes to portraits, and varied in style from pointillism to modernist naturalism. Although he painted diverse scenery, his desert landscapes are particulary noted for their intensity of color and meticulous brushwork, and were therefore likely painted onsite. He often signed his watercolor and oil paintings with the moniker “Charls.” Tracy died in Arcadia, California in 1955. He was fifty-one years old.