Ray Boynton known as Raymond Boynton, was an American artist and arts educator, most famous for his mural work in California during the Great Depression earning commissions under the Public Works of Art Project and the Treasury Relief Art Project.
24 Facts About Ray Boynton
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Ray Boynton worked at Coit Tower painting murals with Ralph Stackpole, Bernard Zakheim, and Edith Hamlin.
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Ray Boynton painted nine murals in the Modesto Post Office which was decommissioned and sold at auction in 2011.
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Raymond Scepter Boynton was born in Whitten, Iowa, on January 14,1883.
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Ray Boynton described art culture in Eastern Washington as "lacking".
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Ray Boynton was able to keep art in his life by giving private lessons in Spokane, Washington; he was hired to paint curtains for a high school theatre; and, eventually, he garnered a commission to paint the Spokane Falls on a mural to be placed in City Hall's first council chamber.
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Ray Boynton first went to Seattle to judge the artwork, and then he continued on to San Francisco where he would take up permanent residence for many years.
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Ray Boynton responded readily to the broader field of activities that San Francisco offered and his artistic growth became rapid and steady.
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Ray Boynton began broadening his artistic abilities by learning pastel and fresco.
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Ray Boynton's art, exhibited in the PPIE, helped him to create connections that would serve him well.
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Ray Boynton got a job at the California School of Fine Arts in 1920, and in 1923 he was employed by the Department of Art of the University of California at Berkeley where he remained until he retired in 1948.
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Lee remarks that Ray Boynton was given the job at CFSA because it was a small school and because Ray Boynton had seen great works of art in museums and exhibitions - not just in books.
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Mary Fabilli, a former art student of Ray Boynton, who helped put together a posthumous exhibition of his work in 1976, provided another possible reason for his hiring besides being well traveled.
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Dixon and Ray Boynton, who had played absolutely no role in 1915, gained an advantage by recognizing the new social and political requirements and mapping their artistic interests onto them.
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Ray Boynton married Margaret Gough, a Canadian, in San Francisco in 1919 who died of tuberculosis in 1930.
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Ray Boynton sacrificed many painting hours to provide his semi-invalid wife with care.
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Ray Boynton understood that, despite the mastery with which he was credited at CSFA [California School of Fine Arts], he required instruction from a more accomplished mural painter.
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Early in the 1930s Ray Boynton began venturing out to gold mining ghost towns of California and Nevada.
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The drawings Ray Boynton subsequently created were later exhibited a couple of times at UC Berkeley and Mills College.
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In 1936 Ray Boynton was commissioned as the lead artist to paint thirteen murals in the Modesto, California Post Office known as El Veijo.
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In 1938 Ray Boynton was elected to the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Art Association and, serving in that capacity, was influential in shaping the educational program of the California School of Fine Arts, conducted by the Art Association.
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Once he retired, he and his third wife - Beryl Wynnyk Ray Boynton - moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Ray Boynton died from cancer September 26,1951 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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Ray Boynton is a significant figure in California art history.