Rex Brandt, landscape painter, 85
Fata Morgana
Artist Rex Brandt, a founder of Newport Harbor Art Museum who was renowned for his
watercolor paintings of Newport Beach and Balboa Bay, died Tuesday at his home in Corona
del Mar. He was 85.
The cause of death was either a stroke or heart attack, said his daughter, Joan Scarboro.
Brandt had been in poor health since cracking two vertebrae in a fall six weeks ago.
Westways magazine called Brandt "one of the central figures in California art in the
mid-20th century." E. Gene Crain, the foremost collector of Brandt's paintings, said they
are "as good as any work in a water-based medium that has ever been painted anywhere at
any time." Brandt's most well-known paintings celebrated a bygone era of California, with
its open fields, blue water and unpolluted air.
"I see landscape as a focus for our feelings," Brandt wrote in a pamphlet about painting.
"I need to paint for the same reason I must walk, swim, dig in the earth and make things
grow. A crackling wood fire is more satisfying than the best microwave oven.
"I paint the happenings of land and sky to overcome a certain dizziness caused by such
unfertile objects as TVs, helicopters and noisy autos. The push/pull of earth/sky reassure
me--I am here."
Besides his painting, Brandt designed the city of Newport Beach's seal and was known for
his teaching and his instructional books. Along with the watercolorist Phil Dike, he
formed the Brandt-Dike Summer School, held at his house in Corona del Mar. His books
included "Watercolor Technique in Fifteen Lessons" and "Composition of Landscape
Painting."
Rexford Brandt was born in San Diego on Aug. 12, 1914. He received his bachelor's degree
at the University of California's Berkeley campus and did graduate work at Stanford
University.
Brandt's wife, Joan Irving, a painter who later helped him run the art school, died in
1995. He is survived by daughters Joan Brandt Scarboro and Shelley Walker, five
grandchildren and four great grandsons.
Cheers,
Fata Morgana