Tilden Daken Legacy Project
Updated: Aug 8, 2022
Here's a wonderful painting of Mount Tamalpais from Mill Valley from almost 100 years ago!
Spring Mill Valley, 30" x 36", oil on canvas, c. 1925 by Tilden Daken
Tilden Daken was an early plein air painter, artist, and bohemian from the Bay Area and for a while made his home on Throckmorton Ave. He lived an exceptional life, painting as he traveled. His life and work is recorded at TildenDaken.com. This piece here was brought into the studio to be photographed by his granddaughter Bonnie Portnoy of San Rafael. Bonnie has been working with us for 20 years to photographically record Tilden Daken’s many paintings, some purchased, but many borrowed specifically for this purpose, for the website (above) that she maintains about him. She has been working for twenty-plus years as his self-appointed archivist, documenting his life and work through the paintings, newspaper articles, personal writing, and letters, as part of The Tilden Daken Legacy Project. Bonnie has even written and self published a 300 page biography as well.
Tilden Daken Legacy Project The artist's incomparable life and substantial oeuvre are being brought to the forefront by Bonnie Portnoy, the granddaughter he never knew. She has unearthed a treasure trove of stories about his artistic career and far-flung adventures. "The actual is more astounding than the imaginary," Tilden once told a journalist, and this can be said of his life. learn more here
The Biography of Tilden Daken
Tilden Daken (June 14, 1876 - April 24, 1935) was an American landscape painter known primarily for his oil paintings of the California redwoods, the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the countryside scenery of Northern California and Southern California. He also painted in Alaska, Mexico, Baja, the Hawaiian Islands, the South Seas, and parts of the East Coast of the United States. more at Wikipedia