Originally a commissioned Native American work?
Rare and unique Cunningham watercolor
Earl Cunningham (1893-1977) was an odd, solitary artist who expressed an inexpressible yearning out of time and place, a sense of the wild, the unseen, the unknowable. He articulated a vision of the landscape that exists somewhere between memory and experience. His is a colloquial dream of man’s harmony with nature, where myth, reality, past and present merges.
Cunningham left home at 13 to make his way in the world. He spent much of his life travelling along the eastern seaboard collecting Indian artifacts and various gadgets and trinkets that he sold as his main means of support. He also created more than 400 paintings.
Cunningham is today recognized as one of the premier American folk artists of all time. Despite this honor, Cunningham can also be seen as a modernist painter. His art expresses an overall sense of goodness, optimism and a utopian harmony. Art experts have called Cunningham 'folk artist', 'modern primitive', 'memory painter', 'an American Fauve' or other terms evoking his passion, composition, imagery and blending of experience. Earl Cunningham was a self taught artist whose works celebrate the beauty of nature and are a unique reflection of American history, from Native American life to more modern times.
Cunningham settled in St. Augustine, Florida in 1949, where he opened a curio shop called the Over Fork Gallery. He displayed his paintings there, although this artwork was not for sale. He continued to paint in relative obscurity. In his spare time, he painted genre scenes, primarily landscapes of the places he saw during his lifetime: Maine, New York, Nova Scotia, Michigan, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
There are inaccurate proportions in most of his paintings. Cunningham sought to create the illusion that size, or proportion, is in the eye of the beholder. Although this concept does not take away from the ability to enjoy the subject matter of the paintings, it does represent a response to life on the fast track towards a modern transformation.
Cunningham, who suffered from depression and paranoia, committed suicide in 1977.
Throughout his life, Earl Cunningham was not recognized as a significant artist and he rarely sold a painting. Eventually, his paintings reached national prominence in one-man exhibitions in thirty museums across the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Museum.
Cunningham left home at 13 to make his way in the world. He spent much of his life travelling along the eastern seaboard collecting Indian artifacts and various gadgets and trinkets that he sold as his main means of support. He also created more than 400 paintings.
Cunningham is today recognized as one of the premier American folk artists of all time. Despite this honor, Cunningham can also be seen as a modernist painter. His art expresses an overall sense of goodness, optimism and a utopian harmony. Art experts have called Cunningham 'folk artist', 'modern primitive', 'memory painter', 'an American Fauve' or other terms evoking his passion, composition, imagery and blending of experience. Earl Cunningham was a self taught artist whose works celebrate the beauty of nature and are a unique reflection of American history, from Native American life to more modern times.
Cunningham settled in St. Augustine, Florida in 1949, where he opened a curio shop called the Over Fork Gallery. He displayed his paintings there, although this artwork was not for sale. He continued to paint in relative obscurity. In his spare time, he painted genre scenes, primarily landscapes of the places he saw during his lifetime: Maine, New York, Nova Scotia, Michigan, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
There are inaccurate proportions in most of his paintings. Cunningham sought to create the illusion that size, or proportion, is in the eye of the beholder. Although this concept does not take away from the ability to enjoy the subject matter of the paintings, it does represent a response to life on the fast track towards a modern transformation.
Cunningham, who suffered from depression and paranoia, committed suicide in 1977.
Throughout his life, Earl Cunningham was not recognized as a significant artist and he rarely sold a painting. Eventually, his paintings reached national prominence in one-man exhibitions in thirty museums across the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Museum.
About this work
The work depicted here is watercolor on paper and is approximately 14" by 24". Cunningham worked in various media, but a watercolor by him is extremely rare. He told collector Marilyn Mennello that he always found time to paint, and that he had done some pictures for the Michigan Historical Society, as well as lived briefly in Georgia and the Carolinas. 1
He also took time to carefully work out his compositions, to the extent of making drawings. He would even pose questions about his preliminary work. On a study of Mackinac Island (circa 1950), Cunningham asked a member of the Michigan Historical Society who had commissioned the work, "Does this want to be here - just say yes or no in a letter. Have not put it in." He would record changes he intended to make in the oil version of the composition and the colors he planned to use when translating his drawings into paintings. 2
There was a series of 20 pictures of Native Americans in Michigan that was commissioned by the Michigan Historical Society, and those works have been entirely lost to time. Although Cunningham did make a handwritten notation on the back of a photograph that he had received $250 apiece from the Society for the 20 works, and noted about the pictures "each was different". 3
It is believed that this work could be one of the preliminary compositional drawings from the 20 commissioned Michigan Indian paintings. And in this instance, Cunningham extended the effort to watercolor. Although not in oil like most of his surviving works, this artwork represents an exceptionally unique and rare expression as it appears as one of the few remaining compositional works executed by Earl Cunningham.
1. The Mennello Museum, Cunningham Dreams Realized. Orlando, Florida, 1998: p. 15.
2. Robert Hobbs, Earl Cunningham Painting an American Eden, Harry N. Abrams, 1994: p. 36-37.
3. Ibid: 98, p. 138.
He also took time to carefully work out his compositions, to the extent of making drawings. He would even pose questions about his preliminary work. On a study of Mackinac Island (circa 1950), Cunningham asked a member of the Michigan Historical Society who had commissioned the work, "Does this want to be here - just say yes or no in a letter. Have not put it in." He would record changes he intended to make in the oil version of the composition and the colors he planned to use when translating his drawings into paintings. 2
There was a series of 20 pictures of Native Americans in Michigan that was commissioned by the Michigan Historical Society, and those works have been entirely lost to time. Although Cunningham did make a handwritten notation on the back of a photograph that he had received $250 apiece from the Society for the 20 works, and noted about the pictures "each was different". 3
It is believed that this work could be one of the preliminary compositional drawings from the 20 commissioned Michigan Indian paintings. And in this instance, Cunningham extended the effort to watercolor. Although not in oil like most of his surviving works, this artwork represents an exceptionally unique and rare expression as it appears as one of the few remaining compositional works executed by Earl Cunningham.
1. The Mennello Museum, Cunningham Dreams Realized. Orlando, Florida, 1998: p. 15.
2. Robert Hobbs, Earl Cunningham Painting an American Eden, Harry N. Abrams, 1994: p. 36-37.
3. Ibid: 98, p. 138.