Posing in his studio in Mill Valley, California, c. 1928.

The Man Beneath the Paint: California Impressionist Tilden Daken.  His long-awaited biography launches April 2024.

Tilden Daken (also known as Tilden Dakin; see Signature Styles) is known as a California Impressionist, the second generation of artists in the American West who painted in Northern and Southern California during the first three decades of the twentieth century. See Wikipedia. Historians say he painted more than 4000 works. Mostly self-taught, his en plein air style is rooted in the genres of Realism, Academic Art, Barbizon, Tonalism, and American Impressionism.  He painted in every California State Park and national parks of the West, and is primarily known for his paintings of California redwoods, Sierra Nevada Mountains, Sonoma County, Marin County, and Southern California’s sunrises and sunsets. He also painted in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, parts of the East Coast, Mexico, Baja, Hawaii, and the South Seas. Unique to any painter of his day, he captured scenes beneath the Pacific Ocean in his custom-built diving bell, the “Submarine Studio,” filmed by Hollywood directors. Eight museums hold his works nd he is referenced in two-dozen books. In the 1920s, he published autobiographical short stories describing some of his most celebrated adventures.

Tilden Daken painting in a field before two admirers, c. 1931.

Tilden Daken painting in a field near Bootjack, CA in 1931. Admirers are his second wife, Florence (right), and her sister Cora.

Northern California Garden Scene

Northern California Garden Scene

In the Valley of the Moon, Mount Sonoma in Distance

In the Valley of the Moon, Mount Sonoma in Distance

On the Trail to Big Lagoon, Mount Tamalpais

On the Trail to Big Lagoon, Mount Tamalpais

Red Sky at Night

Red Sky at Night

On the Bank of a River, Sonoma County

On the Bank of a River, Sonoma County

A Life of Legend


Art historians say no plein air artist went to greater extremes to capture the rugged wilderness of the American West on canvas.


He painted in more than two dozen national and state preserves, including Tahoe National Forest, Yosemite National Park, and Kings Canyon National Park. He became known as the “Official Painter of the National Parks of the United States.”


Notable among Tilden’s acquaintances:

Jack London, celebrated novelist (in their youth they rode the brake beams of a freight train from Reno to Oakland, and resumed their friendship when Tilden moved to Glen Ellen after the 1906 earthquake);

Pancho Villa, legendary bandito;

James D. Phelan, philanthropist, San Francisco Mayor, and United States Senator;

Sophie Tucker, voluptuous vaudeville star;

Andrew Blackiston, author, adventurer, anthropologist, business tycoon in Mexico;

Aimee Semple McPherson, Los Angeles Pentecostal evangelist who gained national celebrity with her weekly radio sermons at Angelus Temple, the megachurch she built;

Aline Barnsdall, eccentric oil heiress who brought Frank Lloyd Wright to Los Angeles to design her Hollyhock House on Olive Hill, now the Barnsdall Art Park;

Virginia Lee Corbin, silent film actress and flapper in the 1920s;

Hal RoachAmerican film and television producer, director, and actor known for producing the “Laurel and Hardy” and “Our Gang” film comedy series;

William Keith, Tilden’s mentor and a friend of John Muir’s, Keith was a Scottish-American painter famous for his California landscapes.