Selden Connor Gile (20 March 1877- 8 June 1947); American painter who was mainly active in northern California between the early 1910s and the mid-1930s. He was the founder and leader of the Society of Six, a Bay Area group of artists known for their plein-air paintings and rich use of color, a quality that would later figure into the work of Bay Area figurative expressionists. Though self-taught as a painter, Gile was most influenced in this exuberant use of color by the Fauves as well as the early French Impressionist paintings he saw at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915. It was those paintings that prompted a "dramatic change" from his early muted colors to those of his most successful period in the 1920s. In the mid-20s, local exhibitions of European art added the Post-Impressionists and the Blue Four to the list of painters and paintings that had an influence on Gile's work. Most of Gile's paintings until about 1927 are small canvases featuring California landscapes and coastline. Stylistically, along with the aforementioned vivid colors, Gile would use thick paint, "...applying loose, expressive brushstrokes of varying sizes." Rarely did his paintings contain people, instead "...Gile invested the contours of the land with sensual qualities others might save for depicting people." As opposed to the Impressionists, who would frequently return to the scene of a painting or do much of their work in the studio, Gile, along with the other Society of Six artists preferred to complete paintings outdoors usually in one sitting. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selden_Connor_Gile) The major force behind the Society of Six in the 1920s in the Bay Area of California, Selden Gile set aesthetic standards that espoused color and guided the group with the strength of his personality, physical energy, and warm hospitality. (http://www.jostfineart.com/selden-connor-gile-6/) undefined

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