Charles Reiffel: An American Post-Impressionist

Charles Reiffel (1862-1942) is widely regarded today as one of the foremost figures of the California plein air school of landscape painting. This book, accompanying an exhibition of the same name at The San Diego Museum of Art and San Diego History Center, aims to reevaluate Reiffel as a leading practitioner of Post-Impressionism in the United States.

Charles Reiffel trained as a lithographer and traveled, worked, and studied in Europe before establishing himself as an independent artist in Silvermine, Connecticut. He finally settled in San Diego in 1925. There, he immersed himself for the remainder of his life in the landscape of Southern California, its coast and rolling hills, discovering in its unique contours new motifs for his striking mix of Post-Impressionist and Expressionist brushwork.

Charles Reiffel: An American Post-Impressionist proposes a fresh assessment of the artist, firmly reestablishing his place as a national figure in the canon of American painting and shedding light on a splendid page in the history of American Post-Impressionism and Expressionism.

Ariel Plotek is assistant curator at the San Diego Museum of Art. Other contributors include Bram Dijkstra and Keith Colestock.