Lot 1257: Edward Bright Bruce American, 1879-1943 A Walnut Orchard, 1929

Edward Bright Bruce
American, 1879-1943
A Walnut Orchard, 1929
Signed Edward E. Bruce and dated '29
Oil on canvas
21 x 31 1/4 inches

Provenance:
Estate of Ronald G. Pisano

Turning to painting after a successful career in law and business, Edward Bright Bruce studied art in Italy for six years, returning to the United States in 1929 and moving to California. After living in Carmel, San Francisco and then Santa Barbara, he headed back east in 1933, when he became an organizer for the Public Works of Art Project in Washington, D.C.

Depicting a walnut grove, the present work appears to date from early in Bruce's California sojourn. Although walnuts were first cultivated along the California coast in the early 1800s, the nut was not commercially cultivated until 1867, when a grove was planted in Santa Barbara. By the 1930s, the commercial walnut industry had relocated northward and is today concentrated in the center of the state, which currently produces two-thirds of the world's supply of walnuts.