Robert Clunie
Encyclopedia
Robert Clunie was a Scottish-American plein air
painter, specializing in California
landscape art
with a particular focus on the rugged mountain scenery of the High Sierra.
in Renfrewshire
, Scotland. His father was a professional golfer
, golf course
designer and gamekeeper
on the Gilmore estate. As a child, Clunie began illustrating his school assignments with watercolor paintings, which attracted the attention of a teacher who organized an exhibition of his work which toured area schools.
Robert developed an aversion to the social class
system then prevalent in Scotland, and decided to emigrate to the United States with his older brother William in 1911. Initially, they settled in Saginaw
, Michigan. Several months later, the rest of his family also emigrated to Michigan.
He found work as a pin striping
artist with A. T. Ferrell Company, which manufactured harvesters
for farmers. Meanwhile, his father obtained commissions to design golf courses in Saginaw, Bad Axe and Bridgeport, Michigan.
In 1918, while his employer was on a winter shutdown, Clunie took a train trip to California, and took a temporary job pin striping carriages for the Los Angeles Creamery Company. He felt at home in Los Angeles, and spent two months exploring the area before returning to Michigan, determined to relocate to California. On his 23rd birthday, June 29, 1918, he applied for U. S. citizenship. It was not until 1939 that he was granted citizenship. On October 29, 1918, he left for California by car with his brother William. It took them one month to reach Los Angeles.
He found work as a set painter for Metro Pictures
, later to become part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
, working on the film The Red Lantern
. His next job was in the paint department at the American Beet Sugar Company in Oxnard
, California. At this time, he planned to travel to Australia. Instead, he met Myrtle Ireland in Oxnard, and they were married on June 20, 1920. His mother died two weeks later. The couple began their married life in Saginaw, and Clunie returned to work at the A. T. Ferrell Company. During this period, Clunie began pursuing a serious interest in canvas painting.
Less than a year later, the couple returned to California, and settled in Santa Paula
, Myrtle's home town. He entered into a successful house painting business with a partner, Sam Dunkle, with specialties including gold leaf
lettering, wallpaper
and faux painting
. In 1923, he designed and built a modern new home that incorporated an artist's studio. He continued canvas and easel painting, increasingly concentrating on landscapes. He also became a serious amateur tennis player.
His brother William, a pilot, was killed in a plane crash in Flint
, Michigan in 1927, which was traumatic as the brothers were very close. In that same year, he left the house painting business to concentrate on fine art.
. Mount Whitney
towers in the background.
On March 13, 1928, Santa Paula was flooded when the St. Francis Dam
, owned by the City of Los Angeles, collapsed, killing 600 people and destroying nearly 1200 homes. Clunie returned to house painting temporarily as the town was rebuilt, but still managed to complete 19 paintings that year.
Clunie was now developing a distinctive style as a landscape painter, and credited John Ruskin
as an influence, especially his book Modern Painter, published in 1881. He was now supporting himself by selling paintings out of his home studio, and brisk sales continued into 1929. He spent the summer of 1929 in the Sierra with his wife, painting in Yosemite National Park
and the Mammoth Mountain
area, followed by an 8 week stay in the Palisades peaks
east of Big Pine
. He hired the Glacier Pack Station to move his gear by mule
, setting up camp on a knoll between Fourth Lake and Fifth Lake. He completed at least 14 paintings in the Palisades, and had found his artistic home, as he would return to the same campsite about 30 times over the years.
He met California mountaineer and nature writer Norman Clyde
during his 1929 painting trip to the Palisades, and they became lifelong friends. The two men shared an enthusiasm for prolonged wilderness sojourns, and in particular, a love for trout fishing. Clyde's biographer Robert C. Pavlik observed that "The two men shared a common philosophy as well. They shared a love of the mountains and each tried, in their own way, to capture the essence of their meaning." Clyde would often visit Clunie's campsite over the years to rest up between ascents, and referred to his camp as "The Palace Hotel". Twenty-five years later, on September 9 - 11, 1954, a severe early-season snowstorm hit the Sierra Nevada, and Clyde and a companion took shelter in Clunie's camp for four days.
His 1929 Sierra Nevada paintings were received with great praise, and he sold at least fifteen paintings in the months that followed. The Biltmore Salon in Los Angeles arranged an exhibition of his paintings, and some were included in a group showing at the Stendahl Gallery. Los Angeles Times
art critic Arthur Millier said of the paintings at the Biltmore, "Mountains are humbly approached by Robert Clunie, a young Santa Paula painter, whose paintings were for the first time shown to a few local critics and dealers in a sample room at the Biltmore. The works displayed made a very favorable impression on this reviewer who believes the artist to have already achieved some splendid Sierra painting, and to be in line to go much further." Millier went on to praise Clunie for his "careful observation of nature, a fine feeling for the grandeur of composition presented the artist by the architecture of the Sierras, and an eye for light as the medium that binds together the separate masses seen in nature." A reproduction of a Clunie painting called The Cliff illustrated the article. In the midst of these positive developments in Clunie's career, the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929. In the aftermath, customers canceled orders for paintings, not a single painting sold at the Stendahl Gallery show, and when Clunie went to pick up his unsold paintings, the most praised of them, The Cliff, had somehow been lost by the gallery. In the wake of this bad experience, Clunie decided to never again sell through galleries, and instead sold his work directly to collectors for the rest of his career. Better news was the birth of his son, Robert Kent Clunie, on November 14, 1929.
Clunie joined the California Art Club
and the Painters and Sculptors Club, giving him an opportunity to exhibit his work outside of commercial galleries. The Los Angeles Times again praised his work on December 21, 1930, observing "for Robert Clunie the crags stand still with the utter stillness of hard granite while he paints the deep shadow tones of granite above a blue pool cut by the gold of a sand bar. In another canvas by him they thrust sharply into the sky, jostling each other in the impestuous force of upheaval." His painting Coast of Carmel was selected for the California Art Club Exhibition of 1931 at the Los Angeles Museum, which is now called the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
.
During the 1930s, Clunie received several commissions to paint large dioramas at the California Exposition & State Fair in Sacramento. Crowds would gather to watch him paint.
In 1935, Clunie spent two months painting in Taos
, New Mexico
. Local painter Walter Ufer
praised Clunie's work there, urging him, "Stay in Taos, Robert. You are giving it a new look." Ansel Adams
called one of his Taos paintings, Vaya Con Dios - St. Francis of Assisi Mission - Moonlight a "masterpiece".
In February, 1937, Clunie won first prize in the Academy of Western Painters Exhibition for his painting Saginaw River. The painting won third prize at the California Exposition and State Fair in 1938.
He painted in the Grand Tetons each summer from 1938 to 1941, and the Los Angeles Times described his Teton paintings as "impressive" and said that "the artist has approached his subject with a bold, strong technique combining the finest in art with a reality and geographic correctness which has excited the highest admiration from the rangers in charge of the district as well as art critics". He became friends with mountaineers Paul Petzoldt
and Jack Durrance
in the Tetons.
When Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939, Clunie developed melancholia
and was unable to paint for a year.
Clunie was an enthusiastic chess player. He beat Reuben Fine
at chess on September 15, 1940. Clunie was the only player who beat Fine, a grandmaster, during his two month tour of the country.
When the United States entered World War II
, Clunie spent six months doing camouflage
painting at Navy refuelling depots at Morro Bay and Cayucos
, California.
In 1942, Clunie went back to his favorite painting location in the Palisades peaks, and returned every summer until 1966, usually spending about two months in the wilderness. He would usually hire five mules to pack in his gear.
, California in 1945, and began building a home and studio. He announced that he was leaving Santa Paula, and the art community in that city organized an exhibit and reception in his honor, attended by over 600 people.
Prominent artists including Edgar Alwin Payne
and Leland Curtis
would often visit Clunie at his High Sierra campsite, and in 1947, 119 members of the Sierra Club
camped close by. Edna Spalding of the Sierra Club wrote "The highlight of tonight's campfire program was the talk by Bob Clunie, the artist, whom we have all adopted as one of our own. We have cherished his friendly presence around camp -- and now can understand both the man and his pictures better for having heard him tell what these mountains mean to him, and how he feels it is his duty and privilege to tell the world about them."
His new home in Bishop was completed in 1948, and he sold his Santa Paula home. Gradually, he stopped entering his paintings in exhibitions, and concentrated on selling his paintings out of his studio or at his wilderness campsite. In 1955, he served on the Inyo County
Grand Jury, investigating taxation of water exported from the Owens Valley
by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
. He developed a friendship with Robert William Wood
, another painter who lived in Bishop.
In 1967, he and his wife took a painting trip to the coast of Maine
.
In 1980, the Arts Commission of the city of Bishop honored him with a retrospective exhibit of 84 paintings. A banner hung over U.S. Route 395
promoting the two-week exhibit.
His wife Myrtle died in June, 1981.
In 1982, he returned to Yosemite Valley to paint for the first time since 1929, traveling with his protégé and biographer, Richard Coons.
In May, 1983, the Ventura County Historical Museum exhibited paintings by Clunie and Coons. Jane Nolan, critic for the Ventura County Star Free Press, wrote, "The soaring Sierra Nevada drew landscape artist Robert Clunie like a magnet. For more than 50 years, the Bishop artist has painted the pure colors of the mountains -- sky blues, pine greens and snowy whites." Clunie suffered a stroke during this exhibit. His health declined, and he died in November, 1984 in Los Gatos
, California, near his son Kent's home.
, California. It is not known how the painting made its way there.
Clunie's home and studio in Bishop was purchased by painter Richard Coons, who renamed it the Coons Gallery, which is still in business. Since Coons' death in 2003, the gallery has been operated by his widow, Wynne Benti.
Clunie was a long time advocate for a dedicated art museum in Santa Paula. The Santa Paula Art Museum opened on February 14, 2010, featuring works by Clunie and many of his contemporaries.
En plein air
En plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors.Artists have long painted outdoors, but in the mid-19th century working in natural light became particularly important to the Barbizon school and Impressionism...
painter, specializing in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
landscape art
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
with a particular focus on the rugged mountain scenery of the High Sierra.
Early life
Clunie was born in the village of EagleshamEaglesham
Eaglesham , is a village and parish set in the west central Lowlands of Scotland - population 3,127 . Today it is chiefly a dormitory town for commuters to nearby Glasgow. The village is distinctive in being based around a large triangular green...
in Renfrewshire
Renfrewshire
Renfrewshire is one of 32 council areas used for local government in Scotland. Located in the west central Lowlands, it is one of three council areas contained within the boundaries of the historic county of Renfrewshire, the others being Inverclyde to the west and East Renfrewshire to the east...
, Scotland. His father was a professional golfer
Professional golfer
In golf the distinction between amateurs and professionals is rigorously maintained. An amateur who breaches the rules of amateur status may lose his or her amateur status. A golfer who has lost his or her amateur status may not play in amateur competitions until amateur status has been reinstated;...
, golf course
Golf course
A golf course comprises a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, fairway, rough and other hazards, and a green with a flagstick and cup, all designed for the game of golf. A standard round of golf consists of playing 18 holes, thus most golf courses have this number of holes...
designer and gamekeeper
Gamekeeper
A gamekeeper is a person who manages an area of countryside to make sure there is enough game for shooting, or fish for angling, and who actively manages areas of woodland, moorland, waterway or farmland for the benefit of game birds, deer, fish and wildlife in general.Typically, a gamekeeper is...
on the Gilmore estate. As a child, Clunie began illustrating his school assignments with watercolor paintings, which attracted the attention of a teacher who organized an exhibition of his work which toured area schools.
Robert developed an aversion to the social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
system then prevalent in Scotland, and decided to emigrate to the United States with his older brother William in 1911. Initially, they settled in Saginaw
Saginaw, Michigan
Saginaw is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Saginaw County. The city of Saginaw was once a thriving lumber town and manufacturing center. Saginaw and Saginaw County lie in the Flint/Tri-Cities region of Michigan...
, Michigan. Several months later, the rest of his family also emigrated to Michigan.
He found work as a pin striping
Pin striping
Pin striping is the application of a very thin line of paint or other material called a pin stripe, and is generally used for decoration. Freehand pin stripers use a specialty brush known as a pinstriping brush...
artist with A. T. Ferrell Company, which manufactured harvesters
Combine harvester
The combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. The name derives from the fact that it combines three separate operations, reaping, threshing, and winnowing, into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn ,...
for farmers. Meanwhile, his father obtained commissions to design golf courses in Saginaw, Bad Axe and Bridgeport, Michigan.
In 1918, while his employer was on a winter shutdown, Clunie took a train trip to California, and took a temporary job pin striping carriages for the Los Angeles Creamery Company. He felt at home in Los Angeles, and spent two months exploring the area before returning to Michigan, determined to relocate to California. On his 23rd birthday, June 29, 1918, he applied for U. S. citizenship. It was not until 1939 that he was granted citizenship. On October 29, 1918, he left for California by car with his brother William. It took them one month to reach Los Angeles.
He found work as a set painter for Metro Pictures
Metro Pictures
Metro Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company founded in late 1915 by Richard A. Rowland . Louis B. Mayer who worked for Metro Pictures Corporation early on. It is not to be confused with MGM which is a much later franchise concerning itself, Goldwyn and Louis B....
, later to become part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
, working on the film The Red Lantern
The Red Lantern
The Red Lantern is a 1919 silent film starring Alla Nazimova and directed by Albert Capellani. It is notable today for Anna May Wong's screen debut in an uncredited role. A single solitary print survives in Europe as well as rumors of a copy at Gosfilmofond, Moscow.-Synopsis:In China, a...
. His next job was in the paint department at the American Beet Sugar Company in Oxnard
Oxnard, California
Oxnard is the 113th largest city in the United States, 19th largest city in California and largest city in Ventura County, California, by way of population. It is located at the western edge of the fertile Oxnard Plain, and is an important agricultural center, with its distinction as the...
, California. At this time, he planned to travel to Australia. Instead, he met Myrtle Ireland in Oxnard, and they were married on June 20, 1920. His mother died two weeks later. The couple began their married life in Saginaw, and Clunie returned to work at the A. T. Ferrell Company. During this period, Clunie began pursuing a serious interest in canvas painting.
Less than a year later, the couple returned to California, and settled in Santa Paula
Santa Paula, California
Santa Paula is a city within Ventura County, California, United States. The population was 29,321 at the 2010 census, up from 28,598 at the 2000 census...
, Myrtle's home town. He entered into a successful house painting business with a partner, Sam Dunkle, with specialties including gold leaf
Gold leaf
right|thumb|250px|[[Burnishing]] gold leaf with an [[agate]] stone tool, during the water gilding processGold leaf is gold that has been hammered into extremely thin sheets and is often used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades...
lettering, wallpaper
Wallpaper
Wallpaper is a kind of material used to cover and decorate the interior walls of homes, offices, and other buildings; it is one aspect of interior decoration. It is usually sold in rolls and is put onto a wall using wallpaper paste...
and faux painting
Faux painting
Faux painting or faux finishing are terms used to describe a wide range of decorative painting techniques. The naming comes from the French word faux, meaning false, as these techniques started as a form of replicating materials such as marble and wood with paint, but has subsequently come to...
. In 1923, he designed and built a modern new home that incorporated an artist's studio. He continued canvas and easel painting, increasingly concentrating on landscapes. He also became a serious amateur tennis player.
His brother William, a pilot, was killed in a plane crash in Flint
Flint, Michigan
Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...
, Michigan in 1927, which was traumatic as the brothers were very close. In that same year, he left the house painting business to concentrate on fine art.
Early artistic career in Santa Paula, California
In the spring of 1928, he completed his first Sierra Nevada landscape, entitled Olivas Pack Station, a scene in Lone PineLone Pine, California
Lone Pine is a census-designated place in Inyo County, California, United States. Lone Pine is located south-southeast of Independence, at an elevation of 3727 feet . The population was 2,035 at the 2010 census, up from 1,655 at the 2000 census. The town is located in the Owens Valley, near the...
. Mount Whitney
Mount Whitney
Mount Whitney is the highest summit in the contiguous United States with an elevation of . It is on the boundary between California's Inyo and Tulare counties, west-northwest of the lowest point in North America at Badwater in Death Valley National Park...
towers in the background.
On March 13, 1928, Santa Paula was flooded when the St. Francis Dam
St. Francis Dam
The St. Francis Dam was a concrete gravity-arch dam, designed to create a reservoir as a storage point of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. It was located 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles, California, near the present city of Santa Clarita....
, owned by the City of Los Angeles, collapsed, killing 600 people and destroying nearly 1200 homes. Clunie returned to house painting temporarily as the town was rebuilt, but still managed to complete 19 paintings that year.
Clunie was now developing a distinctive style as a landscape painter, and credited John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
as an influence, especially his book Modern Painter, published in 1881. He was now supporting himself by selling paintings out of his home studio, and brisk sales continued into 1929. He spent the summer of 1929 in the Sierra with his wife, painting in Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...
and the Mammoth Mountain
Mammoth Mountain
Mammoth Mountain is a lava dome complex west of the town of Mammoth Lakes, California in the Inyo National Forest of Madera County and Mono County. It is home to a large ski area on the Mono County side....
area, followed by an 8 week stay in the Palisades peaks
Palisades (California Sierra)
The Palisades are a group of peaks in the central part of the Sierra Nevada in the US state of California. They are located about southwest of the town of Big Pine, California...
east of Big Pine
Big Pine, California
Big Pine is a census-designated place in Inyo County, California, United States. Big Pine is located south-southeast of Bishop, at an elevation of 3990 feet . The population was 1,756 at the 2010 census, up from 1,350 at the 2000 census...
. He hired the Glacier Pack Station to move his gear by mule
Mule
A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...
, setting up camp on a knoll between Fourth Lake and Fifth Lake. He completed at least 14 paintings in the Palisades, and had found his artistic home, as he would return to the same campsite about 30 times over the years.
He met California mountaineer and nature writer Norman Clyde
Norman Clyde
Norman Clyde was a mountaineer, mountain guide, freelance writer, nature photographer, and self trained naturalist. He is well-known for achieving over 130 first ascents, many in California's Sierra Nevada and Montana's Glacier National Park...
during his 1929 painting trip to the Palisades, and they became lifelong friends. The two men shared an enthusiasm for prolonged wilderness sojourns, and in particular, a love for trout fishing. Clyde's biographer Robert C. Pavlik observed that "The two men shared a common philosophy as well. They shared a love of the mountains and each tried, in their own way, to capture the essence of their meaning." Clyde would often visit Clunie's campsite over the years to rest up between ascents, and referred to his camp as "The Palace Hotel". Twenty-five years later, on September 9 - 11, 1954, a severe early-season snowstorm hit the Sierra Nevada, and Clyde and a companion took shelter in Clunie's camp for four days.
His 1929 Sierra Nevada paintings were received with great praise, and he sold at least fifteen paintings in the months that followed. The Biltmore Salon in Los Angeles arranged an exhibition of his paintings, and some were included in a group showing at the Stendahl Gallery. Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
art critic Arthur Millier said of the paintings at the Biltmore, "Mountains are humbly approached by Robert Clunie, a young Santa Paula painter, whose paintings were for the first time shown to a few local critics and dealers in a sample room at the Biltmore. The works displayed made a very favorable impression on this reviewer who believes the artist to have already achieved some splendid Sierra painting, and to be in line to go much further." Millier went on to praise Clunie for his "careful observation of nature, a fine feeling for the grandeur of composition presented the artist by the architecture of the Sierras, and an eye for light as the medium that binds together the separate masses seen in nature." A reproduction of a Clunie painting called The Cliff illustrated the article. In the midst of these positive developments in Clunie's career, the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929. In the aftermath, customers canceled orders for paintings, not a single painting sold at the Stendahl Gallery show, and when Clunie went to pick up his unsold paintings, the most praised of them, The Cliff, had somehow been lost by the gallery. In the wake of this bad experience, Clunie decided to never again sell through galleries, and instead sold his work directly to collectors for the rest of his career. Better news was the birth of his son, Robert Kent Clunie, on November 14, 1929.
Clunie joined the California Art Club
California Art Club
The California Art Club , founded in 1909, is one of the oldest and most active arts organizations in California. It celebrated its centennial in the spring of 2010. The California Art Club originally evolved from the Painters Club of Los Angeles...
and the Painters and Sculptors Club, giving him an opportunity to exhibit his work outside of commercial galleries. The Los Angeles Times again praised his work on December 21, 1930, observing "for Robert Clunie the crags stand still with the utter stillness of hard granite while he paints the deep shadow tones of granite above a blue pool cut by the gold of a sand bar. In another canvas by him they thrust sharply into the sky, jostling each other in the impestuous force of upheaval." His painting Coast of Carmel was selected for the California Art Club Exhibition of 1931 at the Los Angeles Museum, which is now called the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
.
During the 1930s, Clunie received several commissions to paint large dioramas at the California Exposition & State Fair in Sacramento. Crowds would gather to watch him paint.
In 1935, Clunie spent two months painting in Taos
Taos, New Mexico
Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico, incorporated in 1934. As of the 2000 census, its population was 4,700. Other nearby communities include Ranchos de Taos, Cañon, Taos Canyon, Ranchitos, and El Prado. The town is close to Taos Pueblo, the Native American...
, New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
. Local painter Walter Ufer
Walter Ufer
Walter Ufer was an American artist based in Taos, New Mexico. His most notable work focuses on scenes of Native American life, particularly of the Pueblo Indians....
praised Clunie's work there, urging him, "Stay in Taos, Robert. You are giving it a new look." Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park....
called one of his Taos paintings, Vaya Con Dios - St. Francis of Assisi Mission - Moonlight a "masterpiece".
In February, 1937, Clunie won first prize in the Academy of Western Painters Exhibition for his painting Saginaw River. The painting won third prize at the California Exposition and State Fair in 1938.
He painted in the Grand Tetons each summer from 1938 to 1941, and the Los Angeles Times described his Teton paintings as "impressive" and said that "the artist has approached his subject with a bold, strong technique combining the finest in art with a reality and geographic correctness which has excited the highest admiration from the rangers in charge of the district as well as art critics". He became friends with mountaineers Paul Petzoldt
Paul Petzoldt
Paul Kiesow Petzoldt was one of America's most accomplished mountaineers. He is perhaps best known for establishing the National Outdoor Leadership School in 1965. Paul made his first ascent of the Grand Teton in 1924 at the age of 16, becoming the youngest person at the time to have done so...
and Jack Durrance
Jack Durrance
Dr. John R. "Jack" Durrance was a pioneering American rock climber and mountaineer.He learned to climb while attending high school in Germany, and later founded the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club in 1936 while attending Dartmouth College. Some of his classic first ascents include the North Face of...
in the Tetons.
When Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939, Clunie developed melancholia
Melancholia
Melancholia , also lugubriousness, from the Latin lugere, to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin morosus, self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English wist: intent, or saturnine, , in contemporary usage, is a mood disorder of non-specific depression,...
and was unable to paint for a year.
Clunie was an enthusiastic chess player. He beat Reuben Fine
Reuben Fine
Reuben Fine was one of the strongest chess players in the world from the early 1930s through the 1940s, an International Grandmaster, psychologist, university professor, and author of many books on both chess and psychology.Fine won five medals in three chess Olympiads. Fine won the U.S...
at chess on September 15, 1940. Clunie was the only player who beat Fine, a grandmaster, during his two month tour of the country.
When the United States entered World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Clunie spent six months doing camouflage
Camouflage
Camouflage is a method of concealment that allows an otherwise visible animal, military vehicle, or other object to remain unnoticed, by blending with its environment. Examples include a leopard's spotted coat, the battledress of a modern soldier and a leaf-mimic butterfly...
painting at Navy refuelling depots at Morro Bay and Cayucos
Cayucos, California
Cayucos is a census-designated place located on the coast in San Luis Obispo County, California along California State Route 1 between Cambria to the north and Morro Bay to the south...
, California.
In 1942, Clunie went back to his favorite painting location in the Palisades peaks, and returned every summer until 1966, usually spending about two months in the wilderness. He would usually hire five mules to pack in his gear.
Postwar years in Bishop, California
Clunie and his wife purchased property below the Eastern Sierras in BishopBishop, California
Bishop is a city in Inyo County, California, United States. Though Bishop is the only city and the largest populated place in Inyo County, the county seat is Independence. Bishop is located near the northern end of the Owens Valley, at an elevation of 4147 feet . The population was 3,879 at the...
, California in 1945, and began building a home and studio. He announced that he was leaving Santa Paula, and the art community in that city organized an exhibit and reception in his honor, attended by over 600 people.
Prominent artists including Edgar Alwin Payne
Edgar Alwin Payne
Edgar Alwin Payne was an American Western landscape painter and muralist.-Early life:Payne was born in Washburn, Barry County, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozarks. Washburn is in southwest Missouri, only nine miles from the Arkansas border. But that wouldn’t stop this turn-of-the-century Missouri...
and Leland Curtis
Leland Curtis
Leland S. Curtis was an American artist, mountaineer, skier, environmentalist and Antarctic explorer.He was born in Denver, Colorado, and lived in Seattle, Washington as a child. He moved to Los Angeles in 1914 and attended the Manual Arts High School, where he studied under artist and...
would often visit Clunie at his High Sierra campsite, and in 1947, 119 members of the Sierra Club
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...
camped close by. Edna Spalding of the Sierra Club wrote "The highlight of tonight's campfire program was the talk by Bob Clunie, the artist, whom we have all adopted as one of our own. We have cherished his friendly presence around camp -- and now can understand both the man and his pictures better for having heard him tell what these mountains mean to him, and how he feels it is his duty and privilege to tell the world about them."
His new home in Bishop was completed in 1948, and he sold his Santa Paula home. Gradually, he stopped entering his paintings in exhibitions, and concentrated on selling his paintings out of his studio or at his wilderness campsite. In 1955, he served on the Inyo County
Inyo County, California
-National protected areas:* Death Valley National Park * Inyo National Forest * Manzanar National Historic Site-Major highways:* U.S. Route 6* U.S. Route 395* State Route 127* State Route 136* State Route 168* State Route 178...
Grand Jury, investigating taxation of water exported from the Owens Valley
Owens Valley
Owens Valley is the arid valley of the Owens River in eastern California in the United States, to the east of the Sierra Nevada and west of the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains on the west edge of the Great Basin section...
by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is the largest municipal utility in the United States, serving over four million residents. It was founded in 1902 to supply water and electricity to residents and businesses in Los Angeles and surrounding communities...
. He developed a friendship with Robert William Wood
Robert William Wood
Robert William Wood was an American landscape painter. He was born in England, emigrated to the United States and rose to prominence in the 1950s with the sales of millions of his color reproductions...
, another painter who lived in Bishop.
In 1967, he and his wife took a painting trip to the coast of Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
.
In 1980, the Arts Commission of the city of Bishop honored him with a retrospective exhibit of 84 paintings. A banner hung over U.S. Route 395
U.S. Route 395
U.S. Route 395 is a U.S. Route in the western United States. The southern terminus of the route is in the Mojave Desert at Interstate 15 near Hesperia. The northern terminus is at the Canadian border near Laurier, where the road becomes Highway 395 upon entering British Columbia. At one time, the...
promoting the two-week exhibit.
His wife Myrtle died in June, 1981.
In 1982, he returned to Yosemite Valley to paint for the first time since 1929, traveling with his protégé and biographer, Richard Coons.
In May, 1983, the Ventura County Historical Museum exhibited paintings by Clunie and Coons. Jane Nolan, critic for the Ventura County Star Free Press, wrote, "The soaring Sierra Nevada drew landscape artist Robert Clunie like a magnet. For more than 50 years, the Bishop artist has painted the pure colors of the mountains -- sky blues, pine greens and snowy whites." Clunie suffered a stroke during this exhibit. His health declined, and he died in November, 1984 in Los Gatos
Los Gatos, California
The Town of Los Gatos is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 29,413 at the 2010 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area at the southwest corner of San Jose in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains...
, California, near his son Kent's home.
Legacy
Clunie's lost painting, The Cliff, which had been missing since 1929, came to light shortly after his death. The wife of art book publisher Walter Foster had received it as a gift from friends of hers in NapaNapa, California
-History:The name Napa was probably derived from the name given to a southern Nappan village whose people shared the area with elk, deer, grizzlies and cougars for many centuries, according to Napa historian Kami Santiago. At the time of the first recorded exploration into Napa Valley in 1823, the...
, California. It is not known how the painting made its way there.
Clunie's home and studio in Bishop was purchased by painter Richard Coons, who renamed it the Coons Gallery, which is still in business. Since Coons' death in 2003, the gallery has been operated by his widow, Wynne Benti.
Clunie was a long time advocate for a dedicated art museum in Santa Paula. The Santa Paula Art Museum opened on February 14, 2010, featuring works by Clunie and many of his contemporaries.
See also
- California Plein-Air PaintingCalifornia Plein-Air PaintingThe term California Plein-Air Painting describes the large movement of 20th century California artists who worked out of doors, directly from nature in California, United States. Their work became popular in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California in the first three decades after the...
- Robert William WoodRobert William WoodRobert William Wood was an American landscape painter. He was born in England, emigrated to the United States and rose to prominence in the 1950s with the sales of millions of his color reproductions...
- landscape artist and Bishop friend.