Edgar Alwin Payne

Edgar Alwin Payne (1 March 1883 – 8 April 1947) was an American painter. He was known as a Western landscape painter and muralist.

Payne was born near Cassville, Barry County, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks. Cassville is in southwest Missouri, near the Arkansas border. According to the U.S. Census of 1900, he resided with his parents, two sisters and five brothers in Prairie Grove, Washington County, Arkansas; his Alabama-born father was employed as a carpenter. Edgar's occupation was listed as “carpenter, apprentice.”

Leaving home on several occasions, Payne painted houses, signs, portraits, murals, and local theater stage sets, to pay his way. Traveling through the Ozarks, then around the Southeast and Midwest, he finally wound up in Chicago, and enrolled to study portrait art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.^[when?] He remained only two weeks at the institute, finding it too structured.^[when?] He preferred instead to be self-taught, relying on practice and his own sense of direction.

Struggling at first, he soon exhibited a group of landscape works, painted on a small easel, at the Palette and Chisel Club.^[when?] During this period he also obtained the occasional mural work to supplement his income.

In 1909, at the age of 26, he made his way to California for the first time. He spent several months painting at Laguna Beach, then headed to San Francisco. In San Francisco he met other artists, including commercial artist Elsie Palmer (1884–1971). He returned to California for a second time in 1911. When he returned to Illinois that fall, he found that Elsie had taken a job as commercial artist in Chicago. This cemented their already growing interest in each other. On the morning of their wedding day about a year later, 9 November 1912, Edgar noticed that the light was "perfect", and had Elsie postpone the ceremony until the afternoon. Luckily the artist in her offered some understanding.

As a couple they became well known in Chicago's art circle. Elsie helped Edgar with his mural work, and soon he had an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Arguably their greatest collaborative effort happened in 1914 with the arrival of their daughter, Evelyn. Between 1915 and 1918-19 Edgar maintained a professional address in Chicago at the Tree Studio Building on East Ohio Street.

The following spring they took Evelyn to see her maternal grandparents in San Francisco. They also attended the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. The following year Edgar made his first trip to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This trip was a big moment in his life, and Payne would return again and again to paint the unspoiled Sierra; these paintings remain one of the hallmarks of his work.

He earned his first major commission in 1917. In a bid to attract tourism, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad asked him to paint the Southwest, along the railroads' trek from Albuquerque to California. This commission not only solidified his reputation as an artist, it also forever linked him to Western America. Although he painted in Europe, he is most remembered for his work from the Four Corners area of the Navajo Nation Reservation, Yosemite, and the California coast. That year he and Elsie spent four months painting, exploring, and taking in Canyon de Chelly. This area, from Taos, New Mexico to the Grand Canyon, became one of Payne's two main inspirations for the next twenty years.