The League grew out of the life classes taught by landscape painter Hanson Puthuff in his L.A. studio. Puthuff and Los Angeles Times art critic Antony Anderson co-founded the League on April 18, 1906. The school offered three-day-a-week morning classes for women and three-day-a-week evening classes for men. By December, the League had outgrown Puthuff's studio, and rented space in the Blanchard Music Hall and Art Gallery, at 10th & Figueroa Streets.
"One of the most interesting of the art schools in Los Angeles is the Art Students League. Only a little over a year old, it is still in its beginnings. Yet its growth has been steady, and there can be no doubt, it seems to me, that it will someday be a great power for artistic good in our community." — Antony Anderson, The Los Angeles Times
Walter Hedges bought out Puthuff's share in the League in 1907, and became the school's second director. Hedges had been a student of painter Robert Henri, and embraced Henri's philosophy that an artist should paint scenes of contemporary life, capturing its energy through the use of bold color and vigorous brushwork. This was in contrast to the more conservative aesthetic of Puthuff and the California Impressionists. Puthuff and Anderson also had been among the eleven founding members of The Painters' Club of Los Angeles, a group of men artists that met every two weeks in each other's studios. In a diplomatic gesture, Hedges invited the Painters' Club to hold its meetings and exhibitions at the League. The Painters' Club reorganized as the California Art Club in 1909, and evolved into admitting women. One of the attractions of the League under Hedges was the regular availability of a nude model for the sketching and painting classes. Hedges hired champion bodybuilder and Los Angeles Athletic Club trainer Al Treloar as one of the models.
Slinkard
was an alumnus of the League, and had been the beneficiary of a 1908 League scholarship that enabled him to study under Robert Henri in New York City. Following Hedges's untimely death in January 1910, 23-year-old Slinkard was recruited to be the chief instructor at the League, and soon became the school's director. Carl Sprinchorn, another student of Henri, was hired to teach alongside Slinkard.
"For the present, instructors of the ASL of LA are pupils of Robert Henri of NY—and you know what that means! You know, at once, that they are strictly up-to-date in their artistic ideas, that they are the most modern of the moderns, and that they are smashing academic traditions with every vigorous stroke of charcoal stick or paintbrush." — Antony Anderson, The Los Angeles Times
Slinkard was a dynamic teacher and extremely popular with the students. He taught at the League for fewer than three years, before "a hasty marriage to his pregnant model" led to his resignation in January 1913. Sprinchorn assumed the directorship following Slinkard's abrupt departure, but himself left after less than a year.
MacDonald-Wright
Following a period of slow decline, the League was re-invigorated in the 1920s under the leadership of Stanton MacDonald-Wright, yet another League alumnus. He moved the school to new quarters at the Lyceum Theatre, and professionalized its curriculum. MacDonald-Wright stayed for nine years, but the school suffered an even greater decline during the Great Depression. Two of his students, James Redmond and Dan Totten, attempted to turn things around, but the school was eventually reduced to little more than evening sketch classes.
World War II
Japanese-American students Benji Okubo and Hideo Date sustained the League into 1942, when they were "evacuated" to Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming. They founded an Art Students League in the internment camp, where Okubo taught until their release in September 1945.
Post-war revival
The Art Students League of Los Angeles was revived after the war under the directorship of alumnus Fred Sexton. He reopened the school in 1949, in the same space at the Lyceum Theatre that had been its home from 1924 to 1942. It was financially unsuccessful, even after he moved classes to his private studio, and the school closed in 1953.
