Carroll Cloar (Tennessee, 1913-1993) acrylic on board landscape painting titled “The Watering Detail” en verso, depicting two little girls in pink dresses holding a watering can and a little boy in a yellow romper, standing in front of a screen door to a house; an older woman watches from an adjacent window. The white clapboard siding of the house is adorned by pink hollyhocks. Signed “Carroll Cloar” lower left; titled and dated 4-88 en verso. Silver-gilt molded frame. 23″ x 34″; framed 31″ x 42″. Accompanying the painting is a Cloar promotional postcard, on which the artist has written a note regarding the painting: “Mr. Massie: I have used the word “detail” in the old Army sense. In our army you were detailed to do a certain job, or were on a detail. My show opens at Schmidt Bingham Gallery in New York May 24. – Carroll Cloar “. 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. Provenance: Private Middle Tennessee collection. CONDITION: Fingerprint smudge upper right edge. Overall very good condition. Frame has some small edge abrasions.