Sunday, April 22, 2007

Downtown Los Angeles

Ralph Hulett buildings
© by the Estate Of Ralph Hulett. Click on the thumbnail to see a full-sized image.

This is an oil of downtown L.A. Specifically, old Bunker Hill in the final stages of decay at the Second Street tunnel. It was done in the mid-sixties when urban renewal had started and the old, turn-of-the-19th-century mansions that had decorated the hill were being torn down or removed.

This was one of a series of oil paintings Hulett created for a large art exhibit at the Occidental Building in downtown Los Angeles. His day job at this time was painting backgrounds for Jungle Book.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow-- Great stuff. One really gets a sense of the deterioration which took hold once it was decided that Bunker Hill,in it's aged granduer, was down for the count. I can actually remember seeing some of that when my Dad and I went to take a last ride on Angel's Flight (in it's original location back) in 1969.
Ralph captured it perfectly.
Thanks for posting these paintings, Steve..they're marvelous.

Anonymous said...

A pair of downtown L.A. fixtures:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGldM85dXYs

Haven't seen these two in a while. They are WONDerful.

Please post. Not spam. Just a friend and a life long Angelino. Love your Blog

tonypetersart said...

These Ralph Hulett paintings are AWESOME! Just saw a few originals at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica, nice to see the vigerous palette knife work and paint handling in person. Wish I could own one of his oils.

Thanks for posting, I want to see more!

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