Painting the coast redwoods on the Russian River, Sonoma County.

Press Quotes

“Mr. Daken does most of his sketching early in the evening or late in the afternoon, and has a fine eye for color. He works rapidly and has the happy faculty of transforming elusive lights and shadows to the canvas.”

Sonoma Valley Expositor, September 27, 1907


“Samuel T. Daken is a great sun worshipper. The life-giving rays of that orb are in evidence in every one of his paintings.”

Santa Rosa Press Democrat, January 25, 1908


“The practical and artistic are happily combined in the make-up of S.T. Daken, a well-known artist of Santa Rosa, and enable him to originate and carry to successful conclusion enterprises impossible for other professional men to even conceive.”

Tom Gregory, “History of Sonoma County, 1911”


“If you miss a meal occasionally, don’t let it worry you, you’ve probably added another day to your life.’ . . . In addition to his diet don’ts, Dakin twice daily runs through fourteen exercises, and while he said that the majority of people emphasize the arm and leg exercises, he stressed the ‘stretching and trunk’ exercises. And thus the painter never loses a day at his easel because of ill health.”

San Francisco Call and Post, May 26, 1922


“Essentially a man of the outdoors, this painter has immortalized in his pictures the spirit of California Mountains with a clear understanding and knowledge of their moods. To him goes the credit for discovering and perpetuating the beauties of the Lake Tahoe region which has become known as the Northern California Alps.”

Hollywood Daily Citizen, May 26, 1923


“Music and painting are the same. Tubes of paint are the same as the keyboard of a piano. One plays in a key or paints in a key. It is all notes, scales, half-tones and values. Without the knowledge of values, one will fail in harmony of melody and fall short of painting anything worthwhile.”

Tilden Daken as quoted in Hollywood Daily Citizen, May 26, 1923


“Every little thing seems to respond to me in nature’s spirit. An artist must know the secret beauty of the big outdoors before he can get very far in creating pictures that will live.”

Tilden Daken as quoted in Hollywood Daily Citizen, May 26, 1923


“The charm and poetry of Jack London’s ‘Valley of the Moon’ have been perpetuated by Dakin’s brush.”

San Francisco Chronicle, July 29, 1923


“From painting the charming actresses of Los Angeles’ leading industry to depicting the brutal countenances of the headhunters is running close to the limit. Let’s hope Daken comes out with the heads of the headhunters and that they don’t get his instead.”

San Francisco Chronicle, July 29, 1923


“There were some wonderful canvases at the show, but yours stood out like a moon among the stars.”

Boston art critic E. H. Rollins as quoted in Holly Leaves, May 30, 1924


“Tilden Daken, well-known for his paintings of California themes, declares he spent four years studying the redwood tree before submitting a single canvas.”

Oakland Tribune, January 21, 1926


“So far as I know, there is only one man in the world who deliberately descends into the realms of Neptune, penetrating to depths from a hundred to two hundred feet, in order to paint portraits of sharks, octopi, and other fearsome sea-creatures.”

Harry H. Dunn, Wide World Magazine, March 1926

More Information


Tilden Daken painting on the rim of the World, Lake Arrowhead, 1923.

Tilden Daken painting on the Rim of the World, Lake Arrowhead, 1923.

Tilden Daken painting on the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts during the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915.

Tilden Daken painting on the lagoon at the Palace of Fine Arts during the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915.