California was a constant surprise to him. He was by himself and supporting himself. He felt free and able, and he was proud of himself. His father had gone back East with a family that in time totaled nine. Someplace with that brood was August, Gutzon’s companion at St. Mary’s. It was to be a long time before Gutzon would see some of his other brothers and sisters. But no matter! California was warm in the winter, and it didn’t cost much to get things to eat. And he kept meeting people who interested him. While he was still with the lithographer he met an artist named Eberlie, a really good painter of the Düsseldorf school. Eberlie turned out beautiful ensembles that seemed perfect in color and design. Gutzon yearned to do the same thing. Something had awakened in him. He went on and on with his work in the tiny studio, producing little that looked like anything, learning slowly what was wrong. He couldn’t have quit. He was still there even after Dr. Borglum and the family had moved back to Omaha. Information about his early years in this paradise, however, doesn’t come so much from him as from strangers. Charles F. Lummis, whom he knew well and with whom he later wrangled extensively, wrote a piece about him in _The Land of Sunshine_ (later, _Out West_) magazine in 1906. He said: It was a matter of nine years ago. Los Angeles was a country town, just emerging from adobehood. This writer found a green, serious lad belaboring canvas in a bare room on what was then Fort Street. He had no money and not many friends. The painting he was at had many shortcomings and showed his lack of art education. Yet there was in them a creative breath that promised to make him heard from.... He was born in the West and was Western in every fibre. Soon after graduation from seminary he came to Los Angeles, and presently began the long, hard struggle of an unbefriended artist. By and for himself, by sheer dint of pluck and brains, he hewed his way. At last his pictures attracted the attention of one of the few connoisseurs then here.... A couple have been sold to Easterners at good prices.... Gutzon, however, was not long friendless. He appears to have been discovered by George Butler Griffin, who had married a Castilian lady from Colombia and lived in Los Angeles. They had several gifted children, one of whom was the mother of the actress, Bebe Daniels. Another daughter, Mrs. Eva Griffin Turner, herself a painter, was among Gutzon’s early heralds. She met him first in the eighties and never forgot a detail of their meeting. She was twelve years old at the time and for a year or more had been sketching and painting in her own fashion with a child’s color box. She was allowed to trail along with him and a class he was instructing, and she never forgot what he said as the pupils gazed at a sunset beyond Los Angeles.