Access
Use Restrictions
Preferred Citation
Acquisition Information
Biography
Scope and Content of Collection
Processing Information
Contributing Institution:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Title: Marion L. Jochimsen paintings
Creator:
Jochimsen, Marion L., 1894-1996
source:
Jochimsen, Marion L., 1894-1996
Identifier/Call Number: MS.047
Physical Description:
1.5 Linear Feet
3 boxes, 2 framed items
Date (inclusive): 1930-1978
Abstract: This collection contains 21 tempera
portrait paintings done by Jochimsen along with a couple of photos of her, color
transparencies of the paintings, her scrapbook and a holograph autobiography.
Language of Material:
English .
Access
Collection open for research.
Use Restrictions
Copyright for the items in this collection is owned by the creators and their heirs.
Reproduction or distribution of any work protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair
use requires permission from the copyright owner. It is the responsibility of the user to
determine whether a use is fair use, and to obtain any necessary permissions. For more
information see UCSC Special Collections and Archives policy on Reproduction and Use.
Preferred Citation
Marion L. Jochimsen paintings. MS 47. Special Collections and Archives, University Library,
University of California, Santa Cruz.
Acquisition Information
Gift of Marion Jochimsen in 1982
Biography
Marion Jochimsen (1894-1996), a life-long artist and a member of the American Watercolor
Society since the 1940s, died at her home at La Posada in Santa Cruz on January 17, 1996.
She was 101 years old.
Marion led a colorful life that took her from her native Alaska to Europe, New York,
Mexico, Santa Fe, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, her home since 1968.
Throughout her life she made her living as an artist - painting portraits, teaching and
working as a commercial artist for magazines and the movie industry.
Marion was feisty, funny, independent, free thinking, opinionated and artistic in
everything she did throughout her long life. She was born in Alaska on July 4, 1894, where
her father owned a trading post in Juneau and operated trade ships which ran between Siberia
and Alaska. Her grandfather was also a trader and a shoemaker who won favor with the
Russians before the United States bought Alaska in 1867.
When Marion was 13 years old her mother brought her from Juneau to San Francisco for high
school and Saturday art classes at the California School of Design which was then affiliated
with the University of California. While there she studied under Frank Van Sloan. She later
studied in Paris at the Academie Scaninave.
In her late teens Marion married Captain Achton Jochimsen, one of her father's best
friends, a whaler, walrus hunter and master of the ice-breaking ships for the Swenson Fur
Trading Company. In 1914, Achton and his crew rushed in during the break-up of an ice-pack
in the Arctic and rescued sixteen men from Vilhajlmur Stefansson's Canadian Arctic
Expedition who had been stranded on the ice pack for a year.
While her husband was sailing around the Arctic during the 1920s, Marion was working as a
portrait artist in New York City. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Marion worked as a
commercial artist for Fox Films. Her work for Fox includes the Academy Award winning film
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and the 1930 John Wayne film
The Big
Trail
, among others. After her husband's death in 1931, she continued to paint and
in 1935 showed for the first time with the American Watercolor Society. For the next several
years, she exhibited regularly and in 1943 was one of the first women and one of the first
portrait painters to be accepted into the Society.
In 1958 Marion left New York for Cuernavaca where she lived for several months, then moved
to Santa Fe. In 1960 Marion moved to San Francisco and taught art classes at San Francisco
State College.
Marion moved to Santa Cruz in 1968 where she lived in a trailer park near Pleasure Park.
She was a common site around town riding her three wheel bike, carrying her little dog in
the front basket. Marion loved dogs, particularly Chihuahuas and other small breeds.
In 1982 Marion gave the University of California, Santa Cruz, Special Collections
twenty-one of her tempera portraits portraits with descriptions of her technique and a book
of clippings and her own writings about her work. In 1990 she gave the remainder of her
collection to the Santa Cruz City Museum of Natural History so that works might be sold to
benefit the City Museum.
Linda Pope, The Pope Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA
Scope and Content of Collection
This collection contains 21 tempera portrait paintings done by Jochimsen along with a
couple of photos of her, color transparencies of the paintings, her scrapbook and a
holograph autobiography.
Processing Information
Processed by Maureen Carey. Completed September 24, 2013.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Artists -- California -- Santa Cruz
County
Painting, American -- 20th
century
Tempera paintings
Portrait paintings
Jochimsen, Marion L., 1894-1996