Description
Photographs and textual materials generated by artist and writer John Clifford Cowles, documenting his time in Montana and
his career in southern California.
Background
John Clifford Cowles was born in 1861 in Freeport, Illinois and studied in New York City with Albert Bierstadt and others.
He made a career as a painter and photographer in the American west during the 1880s and 1890s, before going to Paris to study
with Albert Besnard and Jean-Charles Cazin. In his writing, some of which is collected here, Cowles asserts that Senator William
Andrews Clark was his patron in the 1890s and that he aided in the growth of Clark's art collection, but the extent to which
this may be true is unclear. Cowles returned to the US in the late 1890s and lived primarily in Los Angeles until his death
in 1951. In 1932, he wrote The whispering buddha, a mystical mystery novel.
Extent
1.2 Linear Feet
(2 boxes)
Restrictions
The Clark Library owns the property rights to its collections but does not hold the copyright to these materials and therefore
cannot grant or deny permission to use them. Researchers are responsible for determining the copyright status of any materials
they may wish to use, investigating the owner of the copyright, and obtaining permission for their intended publication or
other use. In all cases, you must cite the Clark Library as the source with the following credit line: The William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Availability
Collection is open for research.