1311 - Edgar Alwin Payne (American, 1883-1947). Oil on board painting titled "Mountains at Chamonix Eastern France." Depicting a luminous, snowcapped mountain rendered in thick, textured brushstrokes. Featuring layers of pinks, purples, and blues ascending the mountain, overlapped by deep green pine trees along the foreground. Signed along the lower right. Further signed and titled along the verso. With a Butterfield & Butterfield auction label adhered along the verso, numbered 5316. Lot Essay: Edgar Payne was born in rural Washburn, Missouri and grew up in the Ozark Mountains, where an early love for the wilderness took root and became the guiding force of his art. By the age of fourteen he was entirely on his own, earning a living painting houses, signs, and stage sets. He eventually made his way to Chicago, where a brief period of formal study at the Art Institute of Chicago refined his natural talent. There he also learned of a young art colony in Laguna Beach, California, and his first visit in 1911 introduced him to the region that would inspire him for the rest of his life. By 1917, Payne had settled in Laguna Beach, drawing on the subjects around him, including Santa Catalina, Laguna Canyon, and the Laguna shoreline. His restless wanderlust, however, constantly pushed him toward new terrain. Between 1922 and 1924 he traveled through Europe, producing a series of striking maritime and mountain scenes that point toward the confidence and power of his mature style. In these works Payne sharpened his ability to convey the energy of the sea and the weight of mountains, and he developed the strong compositional instincts that became a hallmark of his painting. After returning from Europe, Payne began the body of work for which he is most celebrated: his paintings of the California High Sierras. For twenty years he returned again and again to their dense forests and towering peaks, capturing their grandeur with a bold, assured hand. On trips to northern Arizona and New Mexico he adopted an entirely different palette, and he conveyed the vastness of the Southwest by recording the silence of its weather-carved monuments and emphasizing their immensity through comparison with human figures. Today his works are held in the collections of the Phoenix Art Museum, the Springville Museum of Art, the Brigham Young University Fine Arts Collection, and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. Unframed; height: 14 in x width: 14 in. Framed; height: 21 3/4 in x width: 21 3/4 in x depth: 2 1/4 in.