Carroll Cloar (Tennessee, 1913-1993) acrylic on board painting titled “Black Angus”, depicting six black cows in an orange/brown grassy field with barn and barren trees in the background, all under a bright blue sky. Signed, dated and titled en verso “Black Angus/Carroll Cloar/May 1967/Acrylic”. Housed in an ebonized and parcel gilt wood frame. Sight – 11 3/8″ H x 15 1/2″ W. Framed – 16 1/2″ H x 20 5/8″ W. Circa 1967. Provenance: Painting was given by the artist to a friend who lived in Memphis, and has descended in her family. Biography (Courtesy of The Johnson Collection): Arkansas-born Carroll Cloar was known for incorporating nostalgic images from his Southern childhood, often merged with dreamlike motifs, into powerful magic realist scenes. Cloar graduated from Southwestern College (now Rhodes College) in Memphis, Tennessee, and went on to study at the Memphis Academy of Arts under the artist George Oberteuffer. In 1936, he moved to New York to attend the Art Students League. There, Cloar’s achievements earned him a McDowell fellowship which he used to travel across the American Southwest, West Coast and Mexico. Cloar served with the Army Air Corps during World War II and was deployed to Saipan and Iwo Jima. Upon his return from the war, he was awarded a Guggenheim traveling scholarship to fund an extended sojourn to Central and South America in 1946. Two years later, several of his images were featured in a Life Magazine article titled Backwoods Boyhood, and Cloar’s career went on to receive additional national acclaim. By the mid 1950s, Cloar had settled permanently in Memphis, where he produced paintings, often executed in casein tempera and acrylic paints. His works are in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooks Museum of Art, and Library of Congress. In 1993, Cloar’s painting, Faculty and Honor Students, Lewis Schoolhouse, was one of six paintings by American artists selected to commemorate the inauguration of President Clinton. CONDITION: Overall excellent condition.