John A. Stanton
American, 1857-1929

The Clam Diggers

The artist John A. Stanton was born in Grass Valley, CA, on September 15, 1857. His family moved to San Francisco when John was quite young to live on a ranch in the Mission District.   After graduating from St. Ignatius High School, he enrolled at the local School of Design and in 1888 furthered his art studies in Paris. Stanton studied for years in Paris under Laurens and de Chavannes and painted miles of canvases full of Breton peasants and fisher folk. He has captured this magnificent area with his work, Clam Diggers.

His studies also included the San Francisco School of Design. He was Professor of Drawing in the San Francisco School of Design for 15 years and, like Arthur Mathews, he helped to educate the  rising generation of artists in California while he was professor of the Art Institute.

He was a fine colorist who, owing to his able French schooling, had the ability to portray his ideas as he saw them in his mind’s eye. He contributed a group of small Indian paintings to the     Courier Collection-all following the same general type of Pueblo country scenes.