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Sam Hyde Harris

With his strong compositions and subtle colors, Sam Hyde Harris 

captured a time and a feeling long past in a motorized and 

suburbanized Southern California ...The past lives on in the 

eloquence of his paintings." So states an article in the San Gabriel 

Sun in 1977, reporting on his death.

Though Sam Harris was not a native of California, nor even of the 

United States, his paintings remain as stirring testimony to an intimacy 

with and a devotion to his adopted land. A man of large stature--six feet, 

three inches--he was frequently described by those who knew him as 

having a personality to match that stature-"big, colorful, radiating magnetic 

warmth and force." Virginia Kay of the Pasadena Star-News writes, 

"As an artist, too, Sam was masterful, especially when interpreting the 

strength, tranquility and bigness of the great Southwest he loved and related to."

Born to a working-class family in Brentford, Middlesex, England 

on February 2, 1889, Sam Hyde Harris was the eldest son of his 

father's second wife. She died when Sam was three years old,

leaving his father with seven children. During his ensuing childhood

 years, a strong influence on young Sam was an old and invalid artist 

who befriended the boy and encouraged his interest in art and painting.

In 1904, when Sam Harris was 15 years old, the entire family emigrated to 

the United States, going directly to the Los Angeles area where a relative 

owned extensive acreage. While his father and older brothers began a tile 

and roofing business, he determinedly pursued his interest in art, gaining a 

variety of jobs in advertising art. "I did everything from show cards to 

wall work," he claimed. "Wall work" consisted of sign painting on 

buildings--lettering sometimes six feet in height and on walls as much 

as six stories from the ground. Ultimately, he enrolled in evening classes 

at the Art Students' League of Los Angeles and, later, the Cannon Art 

School. Thus he began a lifelong study of art in which he worked under 

some of California's foremost teachers and artists: Stanton MacDonald-

Wright, Frank Tolles Chamberlain, Lawrence Murphy, Will Foster and 

Hanson Puthuff.

In Los Angeles he developed a solid commercial art business, designing 

and printing advertisements and posters for such prestigious clients as the 

Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and Santa Fe railroads and the Pacific 

Electric or "Red Cars." His posters, many of which are held in collections

 today, are fine art in themselves and demonstrate Harris's characteristically 

strong composition The well-known windmill logo he designed for Van 

deKamp's Bakeries remains as their corporate identity symbol.

Although his full-time vocation was always to be commercial art, his 

passion and pursuit of easel painting started early and paralleled his 

entire career. In 1913, at the age of 24, he spent six months in Europe, 

visiting his homeland and studying the art of the Old World. He traveled, 

viewing masterworks to be found in the great museums and galleries of 

England, Holland, France and Germany. He was profoundly impressed by 

John Constable and Joseph Turner and his later preoccupation with light 

and atmospheric effects in landscapes undoubtedly was born with those 

early impressions· Returning to California, he resumed his commercial art 

career, and in 1917, married Phoebe Mulholland, niece of William

 Mulholland of Los Angeles water district fame. They had three sons, 

one of whom also pursued a career in art--Sam Hugh Harris of Carmel.

During the Depression years, in an effort to make ends meet, Harris 

turned to teaching art part time and found a new love. His interest in 

students and their attraction to him continued long past his days of hardship. 

For many years, he taught at Chouinard Art Institute and his superb 

lettering and "how to" techniques were included in books for students of 

advertising art. Through the years he also conducted art classes for

private community organizations, such as the Ebell Club of Los Angeles, 

the Spectrum Club of Long Beach, the Friday Morning Club of Los 

Angeles, and the Glendale Tuesday Afternoon Club. With the Businessmen's 

Art Institute of Los Angeles he developed a special relationship, conducting 

classes and weekend painting tours that took them to scenic areas

such as Laguna Beach.