Werner Wildner (Nashville, Tennessee, 1925-2004), mixed media (watercolor and pencil with oil highlights) on card stock depiction of an owl wearing a nightcap, signed lower left “W”. Grey paper matte with hand stenciled border, in a stained oak frame. Provenance: Purchased from artist; private Middle Tennessee collection. Sight 12″ x 9″, framed 21″ x 17″. Provenance: Private Middle Tennessee collection; a personal gift to the consignor from the artist. Biography: 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. Condition: A few tiny scattered stains or foxed spots to lower portion of painting, not affecting image.