Spotlight: 2506 El Moran by Paul Landacre

Overview

Artwork Title: 2506 El Moran

Date of creation: 1932

Creator: Paul Hambleton Landacre (1893–1963), American

Synopsis: 2506 El Moran by Paul Landacre is a small wood engraving that measures roughly six inches high by six inches wide. Landacre made it during a decade in which he earned national attention for his prints. He specialized in lush California landscapes. Over his career, he depicted the terrain around Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Monterey, Berkeley, and the Bay Area. The print’s title is the address of the Los Angeles house that Landacre and his wife shared for 40 years. He made the print in 1932, the year they bought the house. Today, the Landacre home on El Moran Street is recognized as Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument no. 839.

About the Artist: Paul Landacre

Paul Landacre (1893–1963) was one of the most influential printmakers in Los Angeles in the 1930s. He was also the best-known artist living and working in Edendale, a tiny, hilly community in Echo Park. The neighborhood was a haven for artists and activists in Los Angeles. While living there, Landacre gained national recognition for his technical mastery of wood engraving, which is a notoriously difficult and demanding printmaking process. His work inspired more artists to try it, raising its popularity in the U.S. His elegant and crisp wood engravings commonly depict California landscapes and tropical foliage. He occasionally created abstract designs, still-life studies, and female nudes. Landacre also specialized in engraving illustrations for books. He printed all his work at his home at 2506 El Moran Street. The house still stands and is protected as a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument. After many decades of neglect, an individual bought it in 2022. The firm Oller and Pejic Architecture is restoring it per a recommendation by the Office of Historic Resources so it aligns “with the character it had during Paul Landacre’s life,” as architect Monica Oller said.

Early Life: From Ohio to California

Paul Landacre was an important figure in the 1930s Los Angeles art scene. This was an especially challenging time for artists to earn a living. The United States was recovering from the stock market crash of 1929 and was also struggling through the Great Depression that followed. Artists from all over Europe had begun immigrating to Los Angeles after World War I ended in 1918, making the city a creative center. Like many of them, Landacre adopted California as his home.

He was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1893. A gifted athlete with aspirations to compete in the Olympics, his dreams of competing in track and field ended after a physically devastating illness struck while he was in college. It permanently limited his mobility in one arm and one leg. This caused Landacre to leave his horticulture studies at The Ohio State University. In 1916, he left Ohio to recover his health in the gentler climate of San Diego. His health improved and he found work as an illustrator for an advertising company, where he met and fell in love with his coworker, Margaret McCreery.

Paul Landacre’s Los Angeles

Landacre followed McCreery when she moved to Los Angeles for work in 1923, and they married two years later. He started studying art formally by taking drawing classes at the Otis Art Institute, now known as the Otis College of Art and Design. Despite his loss of mobility from the past illness, Landacre proved to be very skilled at printmaking techniques that demanded physical strength and precision. He taught himself printmaking while he was at Otis and, much later, he would return to the school to teach wood engraving.

In 1926, Margaret took a job working as a secretary to Jake Zeitlin, a poet and gallerist. Zeitlin had strong connections with artists in New York and was one of the most powerful rare book dealers in The United States. He introduced the Landacres to other artists in Los Angeles, like photographer Edward Weston, and the printmaker and painter Henrietta Shore. Weston and Landacre both had their very first exhibitions at Zeitlin’s shop. The Landacres were at the core of this creative community of artists, thinkers, and dealers who were the early advocates for modernist style and European abstract styles in Los Angeles.

A Home in Edendale

2506 El Moran was in a little part of Echo Park that residents called Edendale. Landacre and his wife belonged to the vibrant bohemian community of artists, writers, and political and gay-rights activists who lived and thrived there in the 1930s. The idyllic enclave was established before urban development and the construction of the Glendale freeway, which started around 1929 and cut into the hills, bringing traffic noise to Edendale. The home was also Landacre’s printmaking studio. He owned a 19th-century Washington Hand Press printing press that he used throughout his career. Margaret dedicated her life to supporting her husband’s work. Even with his raw talent, he wound not have achieved as much as he did without his wife. She was his best friend and work partner and the most important presence in his life until her death in 1963.

Landacre's image of 2506 El Moran gives us a view of the final climb up to the house. A path starts near the lower right corner of the image and rises at the left. In the center of this rising path is a staircase that leads straight up to the top of the hill. Above the staircase, massive trees that seem to be lit from behind tower over the hilltop. Landacre does not actually depict his beloved home. Instead, he represents a view of the final approach. He does this to suggest the excitement he feels just before he sees his house every time he comes home, rather than rendering the house itself.

Materials and Artistic Process

Wood Engraving

In 1927, Landacre discovered wood engraving, which requires strength and control to carve a design into the hard grain of a wood block with a burin. The burin is a tool with a sharp, V-shaped point. The shape of the tip enables the artist to gouge clean lines out of the wood’s surface. When the block is inked, the ink sticks to the flat parts and the carved-out lines appear as the same color of the paper. Because the hard grain of wood block is so durable, it can withstand being run through the printing press a few hundred times. This means the artist can make more prints to sell, which is why it was popular for making book illustrations.

More of This Object

2506 El Moran is printed in black ink on smooth, cream-colored Japanese paper. The paper is called “Japanese” because it replicates the look and texture of mulberry fiber papers traditionally made in Japan. Landacre wrote “12/60” in graphite in the lower left corner on the front of The Huntington’s print, just under the image. It means that this was the 12th impression in an edition of only 60 prints total. For a wood engraving, this is not a large edition. The size of the edition is more appropriate for a fine art print meant to be sold individually, as this was, rather than for a book illustration.

In many respects, this is one of Landacre’s most personal prints, even though it is a landscape. The subject matter is very special to the artist, and he produced the print in a limited edition. Also, its smaller physical size forces the viewer to interact with it and look closely to see the delicate details.

Vocabulary

• Abstraction: An art style that uses form, gesture, and feeling to describe something instead of visually replicating it.
• Burin: A printmaking tool used to carve a design into the surface of a wood block.
• Impression: An individual print made from a printing block or plate.
• Modernism: An art movement from the early 20th century that emphasized experimentation and finding new ways to express oneself.
• Stock Market Crash of 1929: The global economic disaster triggered by the stock market crashing on October 18, 1929.
• The Great Depression: The decade of global economic and social recovery that followed the stock market crash of 1929 and lasted until around 1939.
• Wood Engraving: A printmaking technique by which a design is carved into the hard side of a wood block with a tool called a burin.

Questions and Prompts

• How might you describe Paul Landacre’s visual style? How might you describe his use of lines to make shapes and define space?
• How would you represent your home in a piece of art?
• Why would an artist choose to make a print, instead of a drawing, of something special?
• How might his community have influenced Landacre’s work?
• What mood does this print convey? How might you feel approaching Landacre’s home?

Related Objects

Authors and Reviewers

Author

Elizabeth Kathleen Mitchell is an independent curator based in Houston, Texas. She is a specialist in British, American, and Mexican prints. She received her PhD in art history from the University of California at Santa Barbara and has worked as a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

Reviewers

Dennis Carr is the Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at The Huntington.

Kim Tulipana is the Associate Director of Public, School, and Digital Programs at The Huntington.

Renee Ergazos is an editor and the Owner and Managing Editor of Foresee Communications LLC.

Victoria Gonzalez is the Digital Learning Specialist at The Huntington.

References

Fenning Marschall, R. (2010, July 6). Paul and Margaret Landacre’s cabin. Clark Library. https://clarklibrary.ucla.edu/blog/paul-and-margaret-landacres-cabin/

Lion, L. (2024, Nov. 8). An artist's forgotten Echo Park cabin restored. The Eastsider. https://www.theeastsiderla.com/neighborhoods/echo_park/an-artists-forgotten-echo-park-cabin-restored/article_7bab671c-9d58-11ef-a221-b7cd560d4370.html

Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (1983). Paul Landacre: Prints and drawings.

The International Printing Museum. Paul Landacre’s Washington Hand Press. https://www.printmuseum.org/blog-3/landacre-press

Tobar, Hector. (2010, July 10). Edendale—A Los Angeles paradise lost. Los Angeles Times.