Werner Wildner (Nashville, Tennessee 1924-2004), two graphite drawings with watercolor, both signed lower left "W", matted and framed in matching narrow molded wood frames. One depicts a gnome holding a spear and dead game (6-3/4" x 6" sight, 15" x 13" framed). The other depicts a gnome ascending a hill with the aid of a walking stick; at the crest is a large daisy with butterfly circling overhead (7-3/4" x 10-3/4" sight, 14" x 17" framed). Biography (courtesy Askart: The Artists' Bluebook): Wildner was born in Germany but moved to Detroit with his family as a child and, as a teenager, to Nashville. He served in the Army in 1944 and went on to study art briefly at the Mienzinger Art School in Detroit. He returned to Nashville to practice commercial art, but by the mid-1950s had decided to pursue his own art career. Whimsical animals and fantastical, often grotesque creatures were a recurring theme of his work. Wildner met with critical and commercial success after a 1962 exhibit of his art (at what is now known as Cheekwood). However, the death of his parents and collapse of his marriage in the 1970s led him to become reclusive in the last two decades of his life. Provenance: the collection of Stephen and Lisa Steiner Small, Nashville, Tennessee. CONDITION: Drawings in excellent condition, some abrasions to second frame.