Conrad Buff

Tahoe Vista, c.1945

• Oil on panel
• 16" x 24", artwork
• 20" x 28" x 2.25", framed
• Historic

$7,500

Provenance
By descent to a private collector, Encino, California;

Acquired in 1997 by a private collector, Palo Alto, San Carlos, and Oceanside, California, from Butterfield & Butterfield Auctions;

Consigned to American Legacy Fine Arts

Description

Conrad Buff, a Swiss-born American modernist, was celebrated for his distinctive interpretation of the Western landscape. By the mid-1940s, Buff had reached his mature style—marked by geometric simplification, crystalline planes of color, and an almost mosaic-like structuring of form. In Tahoe Vista, Buff distills the Lake Tahoe region into a bold composition of saturated blues, sunlit golds, and deep earth tones. The view captures the sweep of the lake and surrounding hills, as viewed through Buff’s disciplined abstraction and rhythmic arrangement of shapes.

Here, the serene expanse of Lake Tahoe is rendered not as a literal transcription but as a poetic synthesis: granite outcrops become sculptural forms, pine-covered slopes rise in angular silhouettes, and the lake itself lies like a luminous panel of reflected sky. The palette, cool sapphire and cerulean blues contrasted with warm ochres and umbers, conveys both the clarity and quiet grandeur of the Sierra Nevada. Buff’s approach reflects the influence of European modernism yet remains deeply rooted in the drama and harmony of the American West.

Frame
Style: Mid-20th-century solid carved wood frame, reddish-brown tone. Design: Broad outer molding with low-relief, hand-carved wave and foliate motifs, paired with an inner gilt liner (likely original). Era: Most likely 1940s, made in the traditional California style, Warm and bold, echoing the richness of Buff’s palette and brushwork

Condition: Excellent

Exhibited
Scenic Route: A Half Century of California Discovery, 1900-1950, American Legacy Fine Arts, Pasadena, California, August 15 - October 11, 2025

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