Robert Watson; painter (did cover art for Martian Chronicles)
Hyfler/Rosner
reputation
SOURCE: Chronicle Staff Writer
BYLINE: Jesse Hamlin
http://www.aejv.com/watson-bio.htm
Robert Watson, a successful Bay Area artist known for moody,
romantic paintings that drew on post-Renaissance painters
such as Guardi and Poussin as well as Surrealism, died
Tuesday at his home in Poway (San Diego County) after a
short fight with cancer. He was 80.
Mr. Watson, who showed and sold his work in galleries around
the country and abroad, first came to notice in 1947, when
Chronicle art critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote approvingly
of his first exhibition, at Gump's.
"Watson has created a highly personal and effective style,"
Frankenstein wrote. "His pictures deal with lonely beaches
rendered all the more deserted through their sparse
population of dreaming, faceless figures."
In a review of Mr. Watson's show at the Walter Wallace
gallery a few years later, the critic described a painting
of a bridge "which undoubtedly was suggested by one of the
towers of the Golden Gate, but its paint and steel have been
cast back in time to become a great, rusty, ominous thing,
like a brooding castle in some Shakespearian tragedy."
Born in Martinez, Mr. Watson was a largely self-taught
artist who spent several years in New York City in the early
1940s studying the works of the old masters at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums. He later spent
eight weeks at the University of Wisconsin studying with
Frederick Taubes, then moved to Berkeley, where he lived for
many years before relocating to Westport, Conn. He moved to
Poway in 1973.
Mr. Watson, who did the cover art for the 1953 edition of
Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles," was well known in
the Bay Area, cropping up now and then in Herb Caen's
column. In 1983, Caen noted that actor Burt Reynolds popped
into Mr. Watson's show in Carmel, "dropped $3,800 for a
painting of a matador and bopped out. A big night for
old-timer Bob: He sold 19 pictures, at prices up to $4,800."
In 1997, on the occasion of Mr. Watson's 50-year
retrospective at Weinstein Galleries, then-Mayor Willie
Brown proclaimed May 17 Robert Watson Day.
Mr. Watson is survived by his wife, Luisa Costa-Minecci of
Poway; a son, Tony Watson of Santa Rosa; a daughter, Elena
Watson of Sacramento; a granddaughter, Georgia Watson of
Novato; and a sister, Dorothea Runnings of Potter Valley
(Mendocino County).
The family requests contributions be made to the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco, 223 Post St., San Francisco, CA
94108. A private ceremony for family and friends will be
held sometime next month. For information, call (707)
538-8857.