Much Green, Intricate Country Exhibition - RLS Museum

Much Green, Intricate Country

I’m delighted to invite you to explore our upcoming exhibition, opening September 5th: “Much Green, Intricate Country,” featuring 19th century landscape paintings of the California that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson.

When Stevenson arrived in California, he didn’t just find a home, he found an entire frontier of inspiration. San Francisco was becoming the artistic capital of the West, fueled by gold, silver, and railroad fortunes, and alive with a new generation of California painters. Stevenson found his way into that circle through real friendships: artist and teacher Virgil Williams, and Joseph Strong, who married into Stevenson’s own family when he wed Fanny Osbourne’s daughter Isobel.

These painters captured the same California Stevenson was falling for: Monterey. The Bay. Napa Valley. Knight’s Valley. Mount St. Helena.

Our exhibition takes its name from Stevenson’s own words in The Silverado Squatters, where he describes the California hills looking down on “much green, intricate country.”

I invite you to come see the California that inspired Stevenson, through the eyes of the artists who painted it, and to let it inspire you in turn.