One of Joseph Frey’s best works. A Masterful Plein Air California Landscape in the circle of Edgar Payne, Grandville Redmond Julian Rix who inspired Frey’s Landscapes. JOSEPH P. FREY (1892-1977) was born in Walla Walla, Washington on October 17, 1892. At age sixteen Frey began his art studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. He opened his first studio in 1915 in San Francisco during the furor of the Panama Pacific International Exposition and painted many harbor scenes in and around the bay.. By 1928 he had settled in southern California where he lived in Los Angeles, Palm Springs, and Santa Barbara. Member: Painters & Sculptors of Los Angeles.