Vickery, Atkins & Torrey was an interior design firm and art gallery in San Francisco, California, that helped introduce California to Impressionism

Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

. It opened in 1888 on Grant Avenue at Morton Street (now called Maiden Lane), was destroyed in the 1906 fire, and after a few years reopened at 550 Sutter Street, where it stayed in business until 1933.

History

William Kingston Vickery

William Kingston Vickery

William Kingston Vickery was an Irish-American picture dealer who founded the San Francisco interior design firm and art gallery of Vickery, Atkins & Torrey...

 founded an interior design firm and art gallery in San Francisco in 1888 with his nephew Henry Atkins

Henry Atkins

Henry Atkins may refer to:* Henry Atkins * Henry Atkins * Sir Henry Atkins, 3rd Baronet of the Atkins Baronets* Sir Henry Atkins, 4th Baronet of the Atkins Baronets...

. In about 1891 they were joined by Frederick C. Torrey (1864-1935), a specialist in prints and Chinese porcelains. In 1900 the company became Vickery, Atkins & Torrey. During the 1890s William Vickery supervised a series of loan exhibitions that helped introduce Impressionism to California in the form of paintings by Monet, Eugene Boudin

Eugène Boudin

Eugène Boudin was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors.Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores...

, Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...

, Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...

, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

, and Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...

. These pictures were lent by Californian impressionist Lucy Bacon

Lucy Bacon

Lucy Angeline Bacon was a Californian artist who studied in Paris under the famous Impressionist, Camille Pissarro...

, (who studied in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 under Camille Pissarro and met Paul Cézanne), and Mrs. William H. Crocker

William H. Crocker

-Biography:He was born in 1861 in Sacramento, California.He attended Phillips Academy, Andover and Yale University, where he was a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity...

, the leading California patron of French Impressionist art at the time.
In its gallery, the company exhibited European, American and Japanese prints, Pictorialist photography, paintings and sculpture. Some of the prominent California artists who had one-person exhibitions there were Anne Bremer, Maynard Dixon

Maynard Dixon

Maynard Dixon was a 20th-century American artist whose body of work focused on the American West. He was married for a time to American photographer Dorothea Lange.-Biography:...

, William Keith

William Keith

William Keith may refer to:*William Keith of Galston , Scottish soldier during the Wars of Scottish Independence.*William Keith, 4th Earl Marischal*William Keith, 6th Earl Marischal , Scottish peer and naval officer...

, Xavier Martinez

Xavier Martinez

Xavier Timoteo Martínez was a California artist active in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was born in the Mexican city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and, after becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States, died in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California...

, Francis McComas and Arthur Putnam. The works of Mary Curtis Richardson

Mary Curtis Richardson

Mary Curtis Richardson was an impressionist painter and known as the "Mary Cassatt of the West". Her father, Lucien Curtis went overland to the gold fields of California in 1849...

were exhibited at the gallery in 1909.
Vickery, Atkins & Torrey designed interiors for mansions, clubs and universities. The firm sold furniture, decorative objects and jewelry, including many works designed by Henry Atkins. The firm also published art books.

Interior Views of 550 Sutter Street

Jewelry designed by Henry Atkins

Locations

Vickery, Atkins & Torrey moved to several locations within San Francisco during its existence:

• 22 Montgomery Street
• 126 Kearny Street
• 631 Market Street
• 108 Grant Street
• 236 Post Street (where it was located at the time of the 1906 earthquake)
• 1774 California Street (temporary location after the 1906 earthquake)
• 550 Sutter Street, San Francisco