By Gale Fiege / Special to The Herald

EDMONDS — Cascadia Art Museum vice president John Impert’s favorite class at Yale University was art history.

The retired lawyer’s longtime interest in fine art hits a zenith today with the opening of “Painters of the Northwest: Impressionism to Modernism.” Cascadia’s exhibition is accompanied by Impert’s book of the same name.

After earning his law degree at Harvard and working decades for corporations such as ITT and Boeing, Impert retired and got his master’s and doctoral degrees in art history at the University of Washington.

It was his doctoral dissertation that pointed him in the direction of early Oregon and Washington painters. Because so little of their work was displayed anywhere, Impert often had to buy paintings in order to study the artists. His collection constitutes the bulk of the exhibition.

Cascadia curator David Martin has added others to round out the show, which examines works from about 1900 to 1940. Impressionism is a focus, but modernism is evident.

The exhibited paintings involve colorful, light-filled (and rainy) street scenes, mountains, forests, shorelines and farms, and including the people who inhabited the Northwest 100 years ago.

“Northwest light is very different than what you see in other parts of the country,” Martin said. “And it is revealed in many of these paintings.”

If you haven’t yet had the chance to visit Cascadia Art Museum, this exhibit offers an opportunity to see a cross section of regional paintings from a period that was mostly forgotten until Impert, Martin, Cascadia president Lindsey Echelbarger and other founders came together to form the museum in 2015.

With national companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks and others that draw attention to the Puget Sound region, we need to understand and celebrate our region’s artistic history, Impert said.

“Some of our art museums, such as Portland and Tacoma, pay attention to Northwest art before 1970,” Impert said. “But there really is nothing like Cascadia. We’re not as proud of our history as we should be.”

Artists to watch for as you tour the exhibit of paintings are Margaret and Peter Camfferman, Lance Wood Hart, Dorothy Dolph Jensen, Paul Morgan Gustin, C.C. McKim, Eustace Paul Ziegler, the Chase brothers, Helen Rhodes and Edgar Forkner.

“Painters of the Northwest” is displayed through March 31.

Impert’s new book, published by the University of Oklahoma Press, is available for purchase in the museum’s gift shop. It is well-worth the investment for those who appreciate regional art.

More exhibits

Also opening today at Cascadia are “Portraits and Self-portraits by Northwest Artists, 1910 to 2018” and “Northwest Sculpture, Five Decades of Form and Innovation, Part III.”

The portraiture focuses on the varied approaches Northwest artists used to portray themselves and document important people in their lives and in our region’s cultural community.

Martin has done a good job of leading the viewer through this important exhibit.

Look especially for Louise Crowe’s portraits of Clarence Bagley, Ezra Meeker and her mother, a member of the Moran family. And don’t miss Dorothy Dolph Jensen’s caricature of Mark Tobey, and the portrait of Kenneth Callahan by Barney Nestor.

The sculpture hall includes more work by Cascadia favorite Everett DuPen, including an ironwood carving from the 1940s and examples of his tools, which are artistic pieces themselves. Also delightful are Stephen Dunthorne’s carved birds.

The portraits and the sculpture show will be displayed until Jan. 5, 2020.

If you go

Cascadia Art Museum is at 190 Sunset Ave. S., Edmonds. Call 425-336-4809 or go to www.cascadiaartmuseum.org.

Regular hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays. Admission is $10 or $7 for seniors. Students get in free. Memberships are available.

Admission is free from 5 to 8 p.m. today during the third Thursday Art Walk Edmonds event.