Edgar Alwin Payne - Early Life

Early Life

Payne was born in Washburn, Barry County, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks. Washburn is in southwest Missouri, only nine miles from the Arkansas border. But that wouldn’t stop this turn-of-the-century Missouri teenager from seeing the world. Before Edgar was done he would crisscross the United States, travel to Mexico, Canada, and Europe, and even spend the summer in the Alps. But, like John Muir before him, and Ansel Adams after, it was the American West that most appealed to his heart.

Leaving home at age 14, he would paint houses, signs, portraits, murals, and local theatre stage sets, to pay his way. First traveling through the Ozarks, then around the Southeast and Midwest of the U.S., and then onto Mexico, he would finally wind up in Chicago, and enroll to study portrait art at the Art Institute of Chicago. He did not stay long at the institute, just two weeks, finding it too structured, he preferring instead to be self-taught, relying on practice and his own sense of direction.

Struggling at first, he would soon exhibit at the Palette and Chisel Club, landscape works that had been painted on a small easel. During this period he would also obtain the occasional mural work to supplement his income.

He would make his way to California for the first time at the age of 26, in 1909. He would spend several months painting at Laguna Beach, then head on to San Francisco. In San Francisco he would meet other artists, including commercial artist Elsie Palmer (1884–1971), whom he would marry three years later in Chicago. He would return to California for a second time, two years later, in 1911. When he returned to Illinois that fall, he found that Elsie had taken a job as commercial artist in Chicago. This cemented their already growing interest in each other. On the morning of their wedding day about a year later, 9 November 1912, Edgar noticing that the light was “perfect", had Elsie postpone the ceremony until the afternoon. Luckily the artist in her gave her some understanding.

As a couple they become well known in Chicago’s art circle, she would help him with his mural work, and soon he had an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Arguably their greatest collaborative effort happened in 1914 with the arrival of their daughter, Evelyn.