The 40-inch by 40-inch Impressionist oil painting by Joseph Kleitsch depicts a stand of trees in the foreground and Rankin's drugstore and other of the town's buildings in the background. "This is the most important painting by Kleitsch to have come to light, because of the subject, the size, and its unrivaled beauty," Jean Stern, the executive director of the Irvine Museum, in Irvine, California, told Outdoor Painter in 2016.
On "Antiques Roadshow" the painting's original owner discussed the work and how she ended up with it. "I lived in Laguna Beach then, I grew up there, and this is a picture of the way the town looked at that time," the woman said (via PBS.org). Her parents knew Kleitsch and bought the painting from the artist's widow in 1939. Kleitsch died from a heart attack eight years earlier, in 1931. The woman's parents paid $100 (the equivalent of a little less than $2,200 today). Force was not only impressed with the artwork but with its stellar provenance. "They still had the original bill of sale," she told the Laguna Beach Independent. Soon buyers began clamoring to purchase the painting.
