Caroll Cloar was born in Earle, ARin 1913 and died in Memphis, Tennessee in 1993. A painter of scenes from his home, both real and imaginary, and wherever he was at the time, he recreated rural landscapes in a style combining realism and naivete with people, old buildings, and items that remind viewers of places from our childhood.

He was born in Earle, Arkansas, a small cotton-growing town, and he enrolled in Southwestern College where he earned a B.A. Degree. He went to Europe to visit museums, and upon his return enrolled in the Memphis Academy of Art. In 1936, he began part-time studies at the Art Students League in New York where he was much influenced by teachers Arnold Blanch and William McNulty.

He created a comic-strip character called "Junius," that was a combination of Superman and Popeye, but it was not successful. His skill in lithography earned him a McDowell Traveling Fellowship in 1940 to Europe, but instead of traveling to Europe, he went to the Southwestern United States and Mexico, a place he re-visited in 1946. He worked in New York until 1953 and then moved to Memphis where he died a tragic death in 1993.

Carroll Cloar is one of Memphis' most renowned artists. His haunting paintings capture the timeless tales of the South. His obituary in the New York Times stated: "Cloar, a Realist painter, used images of rural America in his work, sometimes portraying events from his own life. He studied at Southwestern College in Memphis (now known as Rhodes College) and the Memphis Academy of Art (now know as the Memphis College of Art) before coming to New York in the late 1930's, where he attended the Art Students League. He won an Edward MacDowell Scholarship at the league in 1940 and a Guggenheim fellowship in 1946.

"Cloar's Realism was sometimes compared to Edward Hopper's, sometimes to Ben Shahn's and it also had a distinct Surrealist slant. He made his New York debut in a group show at the gallery of Edith Gregor Halpert in the late 1940's and exhibited regularly in the city, at the Alan Gallery in the 1950's and 60's and at the Forum Gallery in the 70's and 80's."

Cloar's work is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and the Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington.

Source: www.davidluskgallery.com