Percy Gray (1869-1952)
Mile Rocks Lighthouse (San Francisco Bay)
signed and dated 'PERCY GRAY / 1-9-0-6' (lower right)
oil on canvas
23 x 36 1/4 in.
framed 31 x 44 in.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Property of a Private Collector.

Following the February 1901 sinking of the SS City of Rio De Janeiro, which resulted in the death of 128 passengers, a new lighthouse was authorized to replace a nearby bell buoy. The resulting Mile Rocks Lighthouse, located one mile southwest of today's Golden Gate Bridge, was completed in 1906. While the Lighthouse has since been demolished and replaced by a helipad, its tower lives on in the present work with Percy Gray's memorialization of the Grand Opening.

Gray was initially sent to San Francisco to cover the disastrous 1906 earthquake and decided to stay to pursue his career as an exhibiting artist. When Gray subsequently became allergic to oils, he commenced his long-lived and immensely successful career in watercolors, realistically depicting California's natural beauty with consummate skill.

The canvas has been relined. There is craquelure throughout with an upper stretcher bar crease. Under UV examination, there is a roughly 4 x 4 in. area of retouch in the sky upper right surrounding but not impacting the lighthouse with another smaller area of retouch in the hill upper right. With two parallel vertical lines of retouch in the waves center (which correspond with vertical stretcher bar), the longer of which is 6 in (see photos).

Additional scattered dashes in the sky upper center and upper right corresponding with cracking (see photos). Some retouch along the top center edge and upper right edge, and lower edge corresponding with frame abrasion.

Presented in a gold-colored frame with a fabric liner.