Albert Thomas De Rome

Born in Cayucos, California, Albert De Rome became a California landscape painter, especially of natural landscapes formations, seascapes and marine scenes near Carmel and Monterey. As a young man, Thomas De Rome worked at the Congress Spring Hotel in Saratoga, and in San Francisco at the Globe Foundry, owned by an uncle. He studied art under Arthur Mathews, John Stanton and Lorenzo Latimer at the Mark Hopkins Institute in San Francisco. Early in his career, he became known for political cartoons for the San Jose Mercury News. During this time he began painting small oil and watercolor landscapes at the Oakland Estuary. He sketched landscapes with William Keith, Percy Gray, Frank Moore, and Gunnar Widforss, and from 1915 to 1931, made many painting expeditions to Nevada, Arizona and throughout California. A serious head-on-collision in 1931 during one of those trips ended his professional career. He was hospitalized for eight months, and it took years for him to fully recuperate. Although he recovered his ability to paint, his agreement with his insurance company prevented him from selling his paintings, so he gave away one painting a month for thirty years. He also won many "amateur" awards for his impressionist, luminous landscapes, coastals and seascapes including six first prizes at the Monterey County Fair between 1939 and 1947. Meanwhile, he moved to Pacific Grove with his wife and their teen-age son, and he did much painting at Point Lobos Reserve and other places around Monterey Bay. He died in Carmel on July 31, 1959.

Biography courtesy of DeRu's Fine Arts, www.antiquesandfineart.com/derus