An academy trained California painter of landscape, portrait, and still lifes, Clarence Hinkle experimented with a variety of styles and was part of a "Group of Eight" California artists who exhibited modernist work.

He was born in Auburn, California and grew up on a ranch near Sacramento. His first art instruction was at the nearby Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento, and then, as a young man, he moved to San Francisco where he enrolled at the Mark Hopkins Institute and studied under Arthur Mathews.

Later he was to study under John Twachtman at the Art Students League in New York City and then with William Merritt Chase at the Pennsylvania Academy where he was exposed to American Impressionism as well as many other styles.

From the Pennsylvania Academy he earned a Cresson Traveling Scholarship and spent six years studying in Europe, first in Holland and then in France. In paris, studied at the Beaux Arts, Colarossi and the Julian Academy but later claimed that he learned the most from his walks through the Louvre. He was especially intrigued by the Georgian portraits of Gainsborough, Lawrence, Copley, and Raeburn.

He returned to the East Coast in 1912 and then went to California where in 1913, he had a successful one-man show in San Francisco. He established a studio there and became a prominent member of the art community in that area. At the Pacific International Exposition of 1915, he and Rinaldo Cuneo decorated several buildings including that of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.

In 1917, Hinkle moved to Los Angeles where he taught at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and then became the first instructor in painting and drawing of the Chouinard School of Art. He was highly influential on a number of prominent California artists includig Millard Sheets and Phil Dike.

He married Mabel Hunter Bain, and later lived in Laguna Beach from 1931 to 1935 before moving to Santa Barbara where he resided for the next twenty-five years until his death.

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