By Merton Clivette
Located in San Francisco, CA
Artist: Merton Clivette (American, 1868-1931)
Title: Landscape
Year: Circa 1925
Medium: Gouache
Paper: Heavy Bristol type
Size image: 22.75 x 28 inches
Paper size: 22.75 x 28 inches
Signature: Signed lower left by the artist
Condition: Excellent
Frame: Unframed
About the artist.
Clivette was born in Portage, Wisconsin, in 1868 as Merton Clive Cook, the youngest of five (four sons and one daughter). His father was a retired British sea captain, and his mother was an American of French, Scottish and Iroquois Indian stock.
He stayed with a circus for about five years, traveling all over the Western United States, Canada and Mexico. They did shows for the army forts, for railroad workers and on Indian Reservations.
Clivette settled in San Francisco in 1886, when he was offered a job as a reporter and theatrical writer for the San Francisco Call. He met Frederic Remington during this period. He was the first serious artist Clivette had met and he was an inspiration to him.
Clivette had done some drawing and painting on the road during his vaudeville years, he had a natural facility for it, and he had had some formal art training as well. He had had some training in Europe and was aware of the modern art movement in Europe. Later in New York he participated in symposiums and workshops at the Art Students League. Around 1910 he gave up his stage career and began to paint full time. He was about 40 years old and was to continue to paint vigorously and prolifically for the remaining 22 years of his life, His style can be identified with the Expressionist Movement, His subjects include portraits (some quite realistic, others more generalized) Indians and horsemen, laborers, gentlemen and vamps, jungle animals and birds, fish, seascapes and landscapes.
He was an active participant in the art world of New York. He was a member of the Society of Independent Artists. In 1923 he showed at the Ainslee Art Gallery at 677 Fifth Ave., in 1925 at the Spanish Society in Brooklyn and in 1927 he had a solo show at the New Gallery, 600 Madison Ave. That same year there was also a solo show of his work in Paris at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which included a catalogue. In 1929 he exhibited at the Art Center of the Roerich Museum in a group show of work from the collection of George Hellman. In 1930 he was in a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans" which also included the work of Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, William Glackens, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, George Luks and Mark Tobey and sculptors Gaston Lachaise and William Zorach among others. A description and critical analysis of his work in included in the book by Henry Rankin Poore...
Category
Early 20th Century Abstract Impressionist Art by Medium: Gouache
