Cliff House . 1863
2014
Transfer painting
16" x 16"
40.6cm x 40.6cm
Status & ownership
Private collection
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Contribution
Cliff House . 1863 marks the transition from the Vanishing Landscape series — personal street photography transferred to canvas — to the A Colorful History series, where the source material shifts to historical photographs of places that no longer exist. The formal method is identical: t-shirt transfer paper, flat acrylic colour fields, photograph and paint coexisting on the same surface plane. What changes is the conceptual register. Where the Vanishing Landscape works held a tension between a personal photograph and its potential future absence, this work introduces a temporal distance already built into the source — the building in the photograph was gone before Bolter was born. The series origin story is also a provenance story: all nine early t-shirt transfer ACH works sold together to an unknown French collector, making this painting effectively unreachable for exhibition. Its significance is documentary and foundational rather than physical.
About the work
The first painting in the A Colorful History series. A t-shirt transfer of an 1863 photograph of the original Cliff House onto a 16 × 16 inch canvas, with flat acrylic colour fields in warm yellow, muted green, and soft blue-grey. Made in San Francisco in 2014, in response to conversations about how much the city had changed. Cliff House . 1863 is the founding work of the A Colorful History series, and the first time Bolter brought a historical photograph into the transfer painting method he had developed in the Vanishing Landscape series. The source is a photograph of the original Cliff House — the smaller, first-iteration structure built in 1863, which stood until it burned down in 1894 — taken from an elevated, hard-to-place vantage point, the Pacific Ocean to the left. The building is far less familiar than the Victorian chateau that replaced it, and that unfamiliarity — a version of a known place that has already been erased — is part of what drew Bolter to the image. The painting was made at his parents' house in San Francisco in 2014, after seven years living in Amsterdam. Returning to the city, he found it mid-conversation about rapid urban change — tech money, displacement, transformation. Rather than engage with the contemporary moment directly, he extended the timeline: if the city feels unrecognisable now, how did it look 100 or 150 years ago? The historical photograph became the material answer to that question. The method carried straight over from the Vanishing Landscape series — t-shirt transfer paper, flat acrylic colour fields, the photograph and the paint coexisting on the same surface without one explaining the other. The flatness was already the language. The one decision that took time was the hills: resisting the obvious green, finding a yellow that felt true to the light and the place, and the composition came together. Richard Hamilton is the closest art historical reference — specifically a piece Bolter encountered at Hamilton's retrospective at the Reina Sofía, Madrid, showing paint applied to a historical photograph. The Vanishing Landscape series was already underway before that encounter, but Hamilton clarified the direction. This painting is where the two things fused. All nine of the first ACH works — made with the t-shirt transfer method before Bolter switched to acrylic gel medium — were exhibited together in a grid at City Art Gallery on Valencia Street, San Francisco. A French collector bought all nine at once, for $300 each. Bolter never met him.
Intent
Returned to San Francisco after seven years in Amsterdam and found the city deep in conversation about how much it had changed. That prompted a longer view — how has the city changed over the last 100 or 150 years? Using historical photographs to extend the timeline, viewing contemporary change from a much longer lens.
Direct inspiration
Grew up around the Cliff House area, skated that hill many times. Finding an older photograph of the first Cliff House — the smaller 1863 structure — was intriguing because it was a version of a deeply familiar place that no longer existed. More accustomed to seeing the Victorian one that burnt down, so this earlier building was a surprise.
Making
The hills took some figuring out — didn't want to just make them green. Finding the yellow brought it all together. First time working with the ACH method, still using t-shirt transfer paper rather than gel medium.
Context of making
Initially described as looking up from Ocean Beach, but on reflection the vantage point is elevated — taken from on top of something, hard to locate exactly. The position in relation to the building is ambiguous, which gives the image an slightly unplaceable quality.
Where it went
Was just an experiment at the time — no expectation it would become anything more. It exceeded those expectations and became the foundation of the entire A Colorful History series.
In the practice
Exhibited at City Art Gallery, Valencia Street, San Francisco, as part of a grid of the first nine ACH works hung together near the window. Sold as a group to a French collector for $300 each. Artist never met the buyer.
What this isn't
No conscious rejection of the Vanishing Landscape approach — the method carried over intact. The shift was purely in the source material: replacing personal street photographs with historical photographs to see what that looked like.
In the series
The first painting in the A Colorful History series, and a direct continuation of the Vanishing Landscape method — t-shirt transfer paper rather than the gel medium that would become the ACH standard. The flat, even colour fields carried over from the Vanishing Landscape series; the shift was in the source material, moving from personal street photographs to a historical photograph of a place that no longer exists. Made at parents' house in San Francisco, the city where the series originated.
Richard Hamilton is the closest single reference — saw his retrospective at the Reina Sofía, Madrid, and remembers one piece in particular: paint on a historical photograph. The Vanishing Landscape series was already underway before the retrospective, but the Hamilton encounter clarified and validated the direction. Cliff House . 1863 is where the Hamilton influence and the existing transfer painting method fused for the first time, with a historical rather than personal photograph as the source. The flat colour fields coexisting with the transferred image — neither explaining the other — is the shared formal position.
Visual Similarity
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