Santa Barbara
Art Appraisers
Estate & Insurance
Alice Karle Appraisals
Fine Art & Modern Art
Fine Objects
Estate Appraisers
Insurance Appraisers
Donation Appraisers
1 805 682-2234
Santa Barbara Art Appraisers for Fine Art, Modern Art, Antique Furniture, and Personal Property. Estate Appraisers, Insurance Appraisers, Charitable Donation Appraisers, and Probate Appraisers.
Santa Barbara Appraisers for Estate Planning, Probate, Art Collection Management, and Charitable Art Donations. Art Marketing & Art Sales Services are also offered.
Santa Barbara
Art Appraisers
Fine Art & Modern Art
Fine Objects
Alice Karle Santa Barbara Art Appraisers also offers Virtual Appraisals of Fine Art, Decorative Art, Jewelry, and Personal Property as an alternative to in person inspection.
Office hours are between 9:30am to 6:30pm, Monday through Friday, California time. We also serve the greater South Coast and Central Coast, from Montecito, Ventura, and Ojai to San Luis Obispo, Los Osos, and Morro Bay.
Alice performs Appraisals for Fine Art & Decorative Art, and is accredited in the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice of the Appraisal Foundation. Alice is also IRS Qualified for Estate Appraisals & Charitable Donation Appraisals.
The Gallery shows examples of personal property we have appraised. To view the Gallery click on the “Visit the Gallery” button above.
Property we appraise ranges from important fine art and modern art of the 19th and 20th centuries, fine silver and jewelry, 17th century Chinese bronzes, to libraries of rare first editions.
Marketing services are also available for the sale of your fine art, and fine decorative art. Marketing and Sales is a separate service from our appraisal practice.
We enjoy the unusual or difficult, and have relationships with specialists around the world. Our targeted research capabilities are the key to accurate identification and valuation of your important property.
Whether your needs involve Trust Collection Management, Estate Planning, Insurance, or Charitable Donations, we are happy to advise you on your options and to provide the knowledge you need to make informed choices.
For over twenty years we have been dedicated to being of service to our clients by providing an ethical and professional service. We truly love what we do. We look forward to being of assistance to you.
California in the Arts
As Appraisers for Art and Antiques, we value or market fine art and decorative art from around the world. The well known artistic centers of Rome, Paris, London, and New York often take center stage. But perhaps we can take a few moments to reflect on the importance of our location in California. I apologize in advance to all those who undoubtedly should be mentioned, but for reasons of brevity are not.
The architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, Rudolf Schindler, and Richard Neutra, all constructed important modern architecture in California. We can still visit the Greene Brother’s Gamble House in Pasadena, Rudolf Schindler’s extraordinary and innovative Kings Road House in Los Angeles, and Wright’s Hollyhock House (which Rudolf Schindler worked on). In the South Coast community the names of George Washington Smith, and his associate the architect Lutah Maria Riggs, are well known as the designers of the Casa del Herrero in Montecito, and many other important structures. There is even a home constructed by Richard Neutra here, although it is not viewable to the public.
The great ceramic artist Frederick Hurten Rhead spent an important portion of his career in California. Rhead first came to California as the director of the Arrequipa Pottery at the sanitarium in Marin County. The climate in California was a draw to people suffering from chronic illness, and sanitariums such as Arrequipa needed activities for the patients during their extended stays. Arrequipa operated from 1911-1918 during the Arts & Crafts period, and Frederick Rhead was the director from 1911-1913.
Frederick Rhead left Arrequipa and moved to Santa Barbara where he established his own private studio. Even then, Santa Barbara was a tourist destination. Guests came to stay in the grand hotels, the Arlington Hotel and the Potter Hotel. However, pottery with Frederick Rhead’s crisply impressed “Santa Barbara” mark is actually quite scarce in Santa Barbara, as he primarily marketed to the tourists who visited here. The tradition of fine art pottery in Santa Barbara is continued today by the ceramic artists James Haggerty and Linda Haggerty.
California’s natural beauty also attracted painters. William Keith, one of the charter members of the Sierra Club, was an important California landscape artist in the 19th century, and a friend of George Inness who came to California for a painting trip with William Keith in 1891. The French artist Jules Tavernier emigrated to California in 1874, and is credited as the founder of the Monterey Art Colony.
Tonalism is a style of atmospherics and filtered, often misty, light. Popular in the late 19th to early 20th century, tonalism was widely adopted by California painters. Early works by California landscape artist Granville Redmond, are in the tonalist style.
Edgar Payne, John Marshall Gamble, Guy Rose, Hanson Puthuff, and Lockwood de Forest of Santa Barbara, are other well known names among the California Impressionist artists in the early 20th century. And of course, the “Cowboy Artist” Edward Borein worked from his studio in the old De La Guerra Plaza, and lived in his Pueblo style house (now gone) on La Barranca Avenue on the Mesa of Santa Barbara.
The Santa Barbara School of the Arts operated from 1920-1933. The principal founder was Fernand Lungren, along with John Marshall Gamble, Colin Campbell Cooper, Dewitt Parshall, Carl Oscar Borg, Edward Borein, and others. Anders Aldrin, a modernist artist, attended the school. Quickly establishing a reputation for excellence, the school unfortunately succumbed to financial difficulties brought on by the Depression.
The City of Santa Barbara owns an important collection of Colin Campbell Cooper works, including paintings from his famous Canyons of New York series, and a series of paintings of the structures and gardens in what is now Balboa Park in San Diego, from the Panama California Exposition of 1915.
Political turmoil in Europe between and after the two World Wars, led to a new wave of artists coming to America, who like others before them settled in California for the climate and scenery. Lionel Feininger, the important German Expressionist, briefly taught at Mills College in Oakland in 1938, before returning to New York. Man Ray, artist and photographer, lived in Los Angeles from 1940-1951.
Gertrud and Otto Natzler, whose ceramics are in many museum collections, emigrated to California in 1938, and in turn were mentors to artist and potter Beatrice Wood of Ojai. The important team of modernist designers, Charles and Ray Eames worked in Los Angeles. Ray Eames had been a student of Hans Hoffmann.
Photography as an artistic medium is strongly associated with California, from Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston, to the architectural photographer Julius Shulman whose iconic 1960 photograph of the Pierre Koenig designed Stahl House, has come to epitomize mid-century modernism.
A new generation of artists took root in the 1950s to 1970s. For example, Sam Francis, John Altoon, and Ed Ruscha in Los Angeles. In the Bay area, David Park and Elmer Bishchoff were abstract figurative artists.
Richard Diebenkorn also worked in Northern California, later moving to Santa Monica where he painted his Ocean Park series. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, featured over sixty of Diebenkorn’s works in the 2017 exhibition: Matisse/Diebenkorn.
Telephone No.1 805 682-2234