Sydney Yard was a pioneering American watercolourist and one of the first artists to settle in the burgeoning artistic colony of Carmel-By-the-Sea. Taught and influenced by English watercolourists such as Harry Sutton Palmer, his meticulously produced watercolours of the Californian landscapes he called home for much of his life earned him notable commercial success in his own lifetime. Sydney Janis Yard was born on 5 November 1855 in Rockford, Illinois, the son of William K. Yard and his wife Mary Ann (neé Jones). His early artistic education came under the tutelage of the English portrait painter, George J Robertson, who had settled in Rockford. After further periods of training in Chicago and New York, Yard travelled to London and studied for a time under the instruction of the Royal Academician, Harry Sutton Palmer.
In 1882, Yard travelled to California and went into business with the artist and photographer, Andrew Putnam Hill.
Together, Yard and Hill ran photography studios in San Jose and Palo Alto, whilst exhibiting photography at state fairs across California. Despite earning a living in photography, Yard continued to paint and exhibit his watercolours, notably at the San Francisco Art Associations Spring and Winter shows and, in 1897 and 1898, at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art in San Francisco. In 1897, he opened his own studio in San Jose, California.
Sydney Yard married Carrie E. Millard in 1887, but she sadly died on 27 August 1894. On 18 July 1898, he married Fannie M. Estabrook and together they would have a daughter, Elizabeth. Elizabeth would later marry the artist and founder of the Art department at the University of California, Berkeley, Charles Chapel Judson.
In June 1899, Yard returned to England and spent the following 10 months travelling and painting the British isles. Upon his return, he exhibited his watercolours of English, Scottish and Welsh landscapes at the Vickery, Atkins and Torrey Gallery in San Francisco in April 1900. Following his return to California, Yard continued to live and work in San Jose, but took regular trips down the coast to paint coastal scenes in Monterey and Carmel-By-The-Sea. In 1904, Yard moved to Oakland, opening a studio in the Montgomery Block in San Francisco, which was known as San Francisco’s first fireproof and earthquake resistant building and the centre of the city’s burgeoning artistic community. He began teaching here whilst splitting his time between San Francisco and Carmel-By-The-Sea, before settling in Carmel permanently in 1906 following the earthquake earlier that year that devastated the city of San Francisco. Yard quickly established himself as one of the pioneering artists of the growing artistic colony. He built a house and studio there in 1907 and began to exhibit regularly at the Del Monte Art Gallery between 1907 and 1909. He also continued to exhibit regularly at galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area, including at the Oakland Free Library, the Berkeley Art Association and the Oakland Home Club. He died suddenly of a heart attack on the steps of the Carmel Post Office on 2 January 1909 at the age of 53.
