Granville Redmond was an influential California artist originally from Philadelphia. Born in 1871, Redmond moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend the Berkeley School for the Deaf as a child. Although born to a hearing family, Redmond was deaf from infancy and could not speak. Between 1879 and 1890, Redmond thrived at the boarding school and quickly displayed strong artistic talent. At the age of 11, he was already working with oil paints. By the time he graduated from secondary school, Redmond had secured funds to enroll in San Francisco’s California School of Design, where he studied with leading artist Arthur Mathews, a key figure of early California painting and design. At the art school, Redmond developed non-verbal communication skills and participated in numerous performing arts activities. He also formed a lasting friendship with his classmate Gottardo Piazzoni, who learned sign language just to communicate with him.
Redmond was granted funds to travel to Paris upon graduating from art school and studied with the deaf sculptor Douglas Tilden at the city’s renowned Academie Julian. In total, he spent five years living and working in France, eventually making his way back to California in 1898, as he was unable to afford the cost of living there. Settling in Los Angeles, Redmond quickly emerged as a popular plein air painter, developing a market for his California landscape paintings. Within a few years he was receiving significant media attention for his early tonalist pieces although Redmond’s impressionist landscapes of hillsides blanketed in wildflowers became his signature imagery.
Moving in Los Angeles creative circles in the early 1900s led Redmond to befriend Hollywood actor and director Charlie Chaplin. His chance meeting with Chaplin would turn into a lasting friendship and collaboration, as Redmond was cast in several of his silent films. Chaplin also became one of the painter’s biggest champions, giving him studio space while also commissioning his work. Redmond died in Los Angeles in 1935.
Redmond’s paintings are in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, De Young Museum, Oakland Museum of California, Crocker Art Museum, Laguna Art Museum, and the Monterey Art Museum, among others. The Crocker Art Museum’s blockbuster traveling exhibition “Granville Redmond’s Eloquent Palette” renewed interest in the artist’s work in 2020.
