Career
In 1908, he accepted a commission from philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps to illustrate the botanical diversity of California. Over the next ten years, he produced approximately 1200 watercolor "plant portraits" of California wildflowers, grasses, ferns, and trees. Valentien"s paintings and art pottery work are represented in collections at the San Diego Natural History Museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the California State Library, the Los Angeles County Museum, and in private collections.
Valentien was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 11, 1862, to Anna Marie Wolter and Frederick Valentine.
He studied art at the School of Design of the University of Cincinnati (later the Cincinnati Art Academy), working with Thomas South. Noble and Frank Duveneck. With fellow student John Rettig, Valentien studied decoration of china, learning underglazed pottery decoration from T(homas) J. Wheatley.
In that year, he joined Rookwood Pottery Company and led the art pottery"s decoration department for the next twenty years. In 1903, the Valentiens visited California, staying several months with Anna"s brother in Dulzura, a small community southeast of San Diego.
During that visit, Valentien produced 135 paintings of California wildflowers, exhibiting the collection at the State Normal School in San Diego (now, San Diego State University).
Retiring from Rookwood in 1905, the Valentiens moved to San Diego in 1908. Ellen Browning Scripps commissioned Valentien to paint a series of illustrations of California wildflowers with the intention of publishing a compendium of California"s flora. Valentien worked on the project for ten years, and the scope of botanical subjects grew to encompass native grasses, ferns, and trees.
Scripps ultimately decided not to publish the collection.
Her estate donated the bulk of the paintings (1094 total), to the San Diego Natural History Museum in 1933. Valentien died on August 5, 1925 in San Diego, California.