Lot 171: Carroll Cloar Acrylic on Board Painting, “Final Resting Place”

Carroll Cloar (American/Tennessee, 1913-1993), “Final Resting Place,” 1964, acrylic (tempera casein) on board Magic Realism painting depicting a woman in patterned dress and sunglasses standing beside a grave. Floral funerary sprays on wire stands stick out from the freshly mounded soil beside her, including one with the surrealistic face of a clock. In the background are grasses and trees rendered in Cloar’s characteristic pointillist brush strokes. Signed lower left, “Carroll Cloar,” in script; titled with artist name en verso in paint. Labels en verso for the Alan Gallery, New York, and Christie’s Auction. Ref: G. Northrop, “Hostile Butterflies,” Memphis, Tennessee, 1977, p. 99, no. 229 (illustrated). Housed in the original stained and olive painted wood frame with gilt sight edge. Board: 22 in H x 32 in W. Frame: 30 in H x 40 in W.

Note: Carroll Cloar was known for incorporating nostalgic images, often from his Southern childhood, sometimes merged with dreamlike motifs, into powerful magic realist scenes, and he often noted that literature, particularly by Southern Gothic writers such as William Faulkner or Eudora Welty, influenced his artistic approach. Born in Arkansas, 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 upon his return, he was awarded a Guggenheim traveling scholarship to fund an extended sojourn to Central and South America. Two years later, several of his images were featured in a Life Magazine article titled Backwoods Boyhood, and Cloar’s work began to earn national acclaim. By the mid 1950s, he 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, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooks Museum of Art, and the 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. (Sources: The Johnson Collection/Memphis Brooks Museum of Art).

PROVENANCE: The Entrekin Family Trust; the estates of Jane and Ervin Entrekin, Nashville; Christie’s Auction, New York; the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Weissberger, New York; Alan Gallery, New York.

CONDITION: Painting in overall very good condition. A few tiny spots of retouch to top of woman’s head (1/4″), and center right of canvas in background. Frame exhibits scattered surface wear and small areas of loss to frame corners and edges.