Donna Schuster, although relatively unknown outside California, is a star of the exhibition. She employed a vivid palette and firm brushwork in striking figural works, such as that of the red-haired beauty under a parasol in “On the Beach,†circa 1917. It measures 29 by 29 inches. All works courtesy of The Irvine Museum.

If ever a state was blessed with qualities suited to Impressionist painters, it is California. With its year-round natural beauty, abundant flora, scenic mountains, dramatic shoreline and effulgent sunshine, the Golden State seems tailor-made for nature-loving artists bent on capturing the color and light of the moment with vivacious brushwork and bright hues.

Indeed, when Impressionism made its way to the United States in the late Nineteenth Century, a plethora of fine painters, filled with emotional and spiritual enthusiasm for nature, set out to immortalize California’s natural wonders. Instilled with a reverence for nature like the Hudson River School painters and, after study in Europe, inspired by the high-keyed palette and flickering brushwork of the French Impressionists, they applied their versions of Impressionism to California’s seemingly limitless subjects.

Some California Impressionists initially worked in Giverny in proximity to Impressionist leader Claude Monet or elsewhere in Europe. Many learned painterly brushwork under master painter William Merritt Chase in New York City and briefly in California.

Franz A. Bischoff used his mastery of flower painting to make the colorful garden in “San Juan Capistrano Mission Yard,†circa 1922, come alive in this 24-by-30-inch oil. The setting, with the restored building looming behind, recalls California’s Spanish colonial history.

Yet for all their achievements, California Impressionists have only recently begun to gain the visibility and appreciation they deserve. Their work is increasingly recognized as meeting the highest standards of American art.

The Irvine (Calif.) Museum, led by founder Joan Irvine Smith and executive director Jean Stern, seeks “to preserve and display California art of the Impressionist period&†not only to our constituents in California, but also to people throughout the United States and the world over,” in Smith’s words. Over the years, with traveling exhibitions and numerous books, the museum has indeed spread the accomplishments of California Impressionism broadly and effectively.

Consistent with that record and its mission, “All Things Bright and Beautiful: California Impressionist Paintings from the Irvine Museum,” on view at the Dayton Art Institute through June 13, offers powerful evidence of the talents of these largely overlooked painters. With some 50 paintings by 40 artists, it provides a revelatory cross-section of skills and images. The best-known painter in the exhibition, Guy Rose (1867‱925), a devotee of Monet, was born in California and studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, where he won every award in sight. He was part of the American art colony in Monet’s Giverny that included Frederick Frieseke, Richard Miller and Lawton Parker. Moving to Pasadena in 1914, Rose painted colonial missions, trees (especially eucalyptus) and the rocky coastline.

Painting with a verve that he may have learned from William Merritt Chase, Channel P. Townsley made “Mission San Juan Capistrano,†1916, into an infectious riot of color, shapes and sunlight. Such images helped turn aging Spanish missions into tourist attractions.

In one outstanding work, he depicted the craggy rock formations and deep blue sea in “Point Lobos,” circa 1918, with Monet-like expressive brushwork, vivid colors and palpable atmospheric effects. Like Monet’s series of specific scenes, Rose’s “The View of Wood’s Cove, Rockledge,” circa 1918, is one of five evocative views of a site in Laguna Beach.

Another well-known painter, German-born William Wendt (1865‱946), settled in Laguna Beach in 1912 and faithfully interpreted California landscapes in carefully stroked, atmospheric works, often painted en plein air with contrasts between green and gold. Esteemed art historian William H. Gerdts has called Wendt and Rose “the most significant and original painters in Southern California in the first three decades of the Twentieth Century.”

Particularly brilliant Impressionist effects were achieved by Joseph Raphael (1869‱950), a San Francisco native who spent much of his career in Europe. Applying heavy dabs of bright paint, he expressively conveyed color, light and atmosphere, as in “Market of St Catherine, Bruxelles,” circa 1911.

Among the more interesting artists in the show is Granville Redmond (1871‱935), who was deaf, studied both painting and pantomime and played minor roles in Charlie Chaplin movies. After five years in France, Redmond moved around Southern California, becoming one of the state’s leading landscape painters. He created both moody, introspective Tonalist works, like the strikingly beautiful “Nocturne,” an undated shore view suffused with moonlit deep blue, and cheerful, bright Impressionist depictions of rolling hills of wild flowers, such as “Poppies and Lupines.”

Two other accomplished painters, William F. Jackson (1850‱936) and John Gamble (1863‱957), specialized in brilliantly colored, sun-splashed views of vistas punctuated with lupines and poppies. Iowa-born Jackson served for more than a half-century as curator and director of the art school of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, instilling in students the awe-inspiring potential for plein air painting of the California landscape, such as his own “Radiant Valley.”

Already recognized as a leading marine painter when he settled in California in 1931, Paul Dougherty brought the same powerful brushwork and vivid colors to sea-against-rocks works like “The Twisted Ledge†as he had to depictions of the rocky coast of Maine. This 34-by-46-inch canvas showcases his loose brushstrokes and high-keyed palette.

Gamble, the master of California wild-flower-themed painting, was born in New Jersey, educated in California and Paris and a resident of San Francisco and then Santa Barbara. He worked in what Gerdts calls “a soft, painterly manner emphasizing the chromatic range of golden poppies [and] blue and purple lupine&ften framed&⁡gainst the Santa Barbara mountains,” as in “Santa Barbara Landscape.”

Depictions of cultivated flowers by Austrian-born, Los Angeles-based Franz A. Bischoff (1864‱929) earned him the title of “King of the Rose Painters.” While continuing as a porcelain artist and landscapist, he created bountiful floral images, such as “Peonies,” circa 1912.

Two women in the exhibition, little known east of the Mississippi, deserve special recognition. Donna Schuster (1883‱953) trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and studied with Chase, employing her mentor’s expressive brushwork in landscapes and figure studies, notably the sun-filled, gloriously hued “On the Beach,” circa 1917. Dividing her time between Los Angeles and Laguna Beach, her later works were in the Cubist and Expressionist manners, taught to her by Stanton MacDonald-Wright.

The unexpected star of the show for some may be E(uphemia) Charlton Fortune (1885‱969), a California native who was educated at a convent school in Scotland and studied painting in London, San Francisco, Carmel and New York, the latter two locations with Chase. She had “perhaps the most impressive credentials among California’s painters at that time,” according to art curator/historian Harvey L. Jones. Adds Gerdts, Chase influenced her “to work in the colorful, high-key manner that distinguishes her art.”

Fortune’s vigorously brushed, evocative “Study of Monterey Bay,” 1918, was painted with the élan and forcefulness of Chase and Paul Cezanne. She excelled at creating views of Monterey and Spanish missions around the state. Devoutly religious, she devoted the last 40 years of her life to painting religious subjects for church interiors. Some of us cannot see enough of Fortune’s appealing, painterly work.

Granville Redmond, a native Californian, made his substantial reputation with decorative Impressionist images of broad fields of wild flowers with mountains and sky in the background. In “Poppies and Lupines,†a lovely blend of blooms light up the foreground and contrast with the bluish mountains in the distance.

When not painting landscapes, California Impressionists often turned to themes of everyday leisure and relaxation, with an emphasis on young women outdoors. Thus, Meta Cressey’s (1882‱964) “Under the Pepper Tree,” circa 1927, shows two young women lounging under sun-dappled trees, amid brilliant, colorful surroundings, while Edouard Vysekal (1890‱939) evoked the joys of childhood in a sunny depiction of an exuberant young girl on a garden swing with two companions in “Joy,” 1917.

Working in a state overflowing with natural beauty and panoramic vistas, California Impressionists sought to convey the grandeur of nature in positive, uplifting imagery. Hungarian-born Maurice Braun (1877‱941), a follower of transcendentalism, infused his paintings with spiritual and moral meaning. In “San Diego Countryside and River,” circa 1925, soft, pervasive light illuminates both foreground trees and distant hills in a scene of perfect harmony. Similarly, John Frost (1890‱937) †son of illustrator Arthur B. Frost †who was born in Philadelphia, but sought relief from his tuberculosis by settling in Pasadena, captured the glorious colors of trees in the foreground set against lofty mountains behind in “The Pool at Sundown,” 1923.

Hanson Puthuff (1875‱972), a transplanted Midwesterner, became a specialist in plein air paintings of California’s soaring mountain forms, as exemplified by “Mystical Hills.” Elmer Wachtel (1864‱929) and his wife, Marion Kavanagh Wachtel (1876‱954), created similar trees and mountains compositions in oil and watercolor, respectively. Theodore Wores (1859‱939), a San Francisco native, painted in Europe and Japan, but spent much of his career celebrating the brightly hued flowers and flowering trees of his home state, as in “Almond Blossoms, Los Altos,” 1925.

Among the many painters who found grandeur in forceful, painterly depictions of crashing waves on massive rocks along the coastline were Paul Dougherty (1877‱947) and Karl Yens (1868‱945). Alfred Mitchell (1888‱972) depicted more tranquil scenes of flat beaches and soaring cliffs.

Meta Cressey, a landscape, still life and figural painter, likely found the subject matter for “Under the Pepper Tree,†circa 1927, in her garden in the Hollywood Hills. Here, two young women relax amid sunlit, jewel-like trees and flowers.

During their heyday, most California Impressionists ignored the rapid industrialization and urbanization going on around them, opting to stress the beauty and bounty of their natural world. Before he arrived in California in 1919, Alson Skinner Clark (1876‱949) had assimilated the teachings of Chase and James McNeill Whistler into a brightly colored, atmospheric style, applied with flickering brushstrokes en plein air. He depicted the modest intrusion of beach tents in “The Weekend, Mission Beach,” 1924, with such deference that they hardly mar the pristine landscape.

One manmade feature that numerous painters welcomed was the old Spanish missions, dating to 1769‱823, which they helped popularize through cheerful, romantic views. Artists such as Bischoff, Clark, Colin Campbell Cooper (1856‱937), Arthur G. Rider (1866‱975) and Channel B. Townsley (1867‱921) enveloped the aging structures in a bright, sunny atmosphere that emphasized their gloriously colorful gardens.

Depicting a unique area of the country with verve, skill and enthusiasm, California Impressionists carved out a special niche in American art history. Exhibitions like this spread the word about their achievements and ensure their lasting place in our artistic pantheon.

The Dayton Art Institute is at 456 Belmonte Park North. For information, www.daytonartinstitute.org or 937-223-5277.