Horsemen at Mission Beach (San Diego)

Artist Rex Brandt (1914 - 2000)

Datec.1942

MediumEgg tempera on board

Dimensions22 x 32 in. (55.9 x 81.3 cm)
Framed (Frame is gold, wired, not glazed): 30 x 40 x 2 in. (76.2 x 101.6 x 5.1 cm)

ClassificationsPainting

Credit LineThe Sally and David Martin Collection

Object number2026.018

DescriptionIn the early 1940s Rex Brandt was still living in Riverside, where he had grown up. That said, he was born in San Diego and visited family there throughout his lifetime. After 1920, San Diego rapidly became a Navy town – and at the same time, the Mission Beach amusement park got its start. Like all amusement parks, it had a classic merry-go-round.

While visiting what became known as Belmont Park in the early 1940s, Rex stated that he did a sketch of a girl riding on a carousel horse and reaching for a ring in hope of getting the prized Brass or Gold Ring. If she succeeded, she would win a prize. That was a featured extra on pretty much all carousels of the late 19th and early 20th Century.

The Navy men often congregated at the amusement parks in hopes of meeting girls, or just as entertainment. Therefore they became an element in this narrative visual statement that captures a story Rex witnessed. He did a quick sketch of to remind him of what happened. He wrote that he took the sketch back to his Riverside art studio and painted this American Scene Painting.

Rex used an egg tempera solution as the painting medium, a technique he learned from John Haley, his art professor at U.S. Berkeley. The egg tempera technique uses egg yolk as a means of binding the powder color pigments and sticking them to a surface. It is an ancient procedure used to make art for thousands of years before oil paints existed. Rex said he was curious to try it – and this is one of the key works he produced using egg tempera.

– Gordon McClelland, curator

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