A still-life and portrait painter, Edward Edmondson, Jr. was one of Dayton, Ohio’s leading artists from the early 1850’s until 1880, when he and his family moved to California. His father, a tanner, expected him to join the family business, but he was far more interested in being an artist like his early mentor, Charles Soule.
Like most Ohio artists outside the major cities, Edmondson built up his reputation, year by year, at the state fair, winning seven awards in 1867 alone. The Dayton Art Institute now owns nearly thirty of his canvases.
. Edmondson had a studio in Dayton by 1859. Failing health forced him to seek the milder climate of California about 1870, He was painting with Henry C. Ford in Santa Barbara by 1880, moved to San Francisco in 1882 and then to Santa Rosa where he died in 1884.
Mechanics Inst. (SF), 1881; Odd Fellows Bldg (Santa Barbara), 1881. In: Odd Fellows Hall (Dayton); Dayton Art Inst.; Santa Barbara Historical Society. AAW; G&W.