Lester Boronda (1866-1953)

From an early pioneering California family, Lester Boronda was raised on a Salinas cattle ranch. He studied in San Francisco at the Mark Hopkins Institute under Arthur Mathews, at the Art Students League in New York with Frank DuMond, and in Munich, and in Paris under Jean Paul Laurens. He exhibited at the Del Monte Art Gallery in Monterey and then in 1913 moved to New York where he established a craftsman center and spent most of his career. In addition to painting, he was a sculptor, working primarily in wrought iron. As a painter, he did genre scenes of old Monterey and then in New York did street scenes. He also painted at Mystic, Connecticut, and died at New Canaan, Connecticut on September 19, 1953. Boronda’s works can be found in private and public collections including the Mystic Art Association Gallery, The Phillips Collection, the Oakland Museum of California and the Pennsylvania Acadmy of the Fine Arts.