Arthur F. Mathews (October 1, 1860 – February 19, 1945) was an American Tonalist painter who was one of the founders of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Trained as an architect and artist, he and his wife Lucia Kleinhans Mathews had a significant effect on the evolution of Californian art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His students include Granville Redmond, Xavier Martinez, Armin Hansen, Percy Gray, Gottardo Piazzoni, Ralph Stackpole, Mary Colter, Maynard Dixon, Rinaldo Cuneo and Francis McComas. Early years Mathews was born in Markesan, Wisconsin, and lived there until he was six years old. His father, Julius Mathews, was an architect and moved the family to San Francisco in 1866. Like his brothers Walter and Edgar, Mathews learned architecture from his father. He then went on and studied painting at the California School of Design (later called San Francisco Art Institute), where he was influenced by Virgil Macey Williams. In San Francisco he also worked as a designer and illustrator at a lithography shop. He studied art in Paris at the Académie Julian from 1885 to 1889, where he was influenced by the academic classicism of his teachers Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre, the tonalism of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and the symbolism of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Life in San Francisco Upon his return from Paris, Mathews taught life classes at the San Francisco Art Students League and the California School of Design. He became director of the latter in 1890, and in 1894, married Lucia Kleinhans, one of his art students. Although he was occasionally criticized for his autocratic approach to teaching, which was based on the French paradigm for the Barbizon school, he vigorously supported the presence of female students at the School of Design and published in 1891 a rebuttal to Emil Carlsen, a former Director of the school, who declared that women pupils were inferior and indifferent students. In 1904 the San Francisco District Attorney compelled Mathews, in his capacity as the school's Director, to investigate charges brought by Albert DeRome that he was seriously injured in a hazing ritual devised by fellow student (and later renowned artist) Armin Hansen. He continued to teach there until shortly after the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following the earthquake, he and his wife Lucia collaborated with the entrepreneur John Zeile to open the Furniture Shop in San Francisco. There he could