id: 125032 accession number: 1946.467 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1946.467 updated: 2023-03-08 11:50:34.341000 Railroad Avenue, 1931. Clarence Holbrook Carter (American,1904–2000). Color aquatint ; The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Mary Spedding Milliken Memorial Collection, Gift of William Mathewson Milliken 1946.467 title: Railroad Avenue title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1931 creation date earliest: 1931 creation date latest: 1931 current location: creditline: The Mary Spedding Milliken Memorial Collection, Gift of William Mathewson Milliken copyright: --- culture: America, 20th century technique: color aquatint department: Prints collection: PR - Aquatint type: Print find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Clarence Holbrook Carter (American,1904–2000) - artist One of Cleveland’s most imaginative interpreters of the American scene, Clarence Carter was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, and developed a love of drawing at an early age. Encouraged by his family, he took private watercolor lessons and won art prizes in county and state fairs in his early teens. He studied with William Eastman, Henry Keller, and Paul Travis at the Cleveland School of Art, 1923–27. He exhibited in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1927–39). In 1927 William Milliken, then curator of paintings at the art museum, organized a subscription scholarship to allow Carter two years of travel through Italy, Switzerland, England, and France. In the summer of 1927 he studied in Capri with Hans Hofmann. On returning to Cleveland in 1929, Carter had his first solo exhibition at the Cleveland Art Center. He taught studio classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1930–37. In 1934, under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project, the first of the New Deal art programs, Carter was commissioned to paint two murals for Cleveland Public Auditorium. For a subsequent governmental art program, the Works Progress Administration, he served as a district supervisor for painting projects in north east Ohio. After 1935 he completed two federal mural commissions: one for the post office in Ravenna, Ohio, and another for the post office in his hometown. In 1938 he moved to Pittsburgh to teach at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University). During the 1930s and 1940s he showed in annual exhibitions in Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
Transformations in Cleveland Art (CMA, 1996), p. 224 --- measurements: state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Nocturnal Impressions opening date: 1985-02-20T05:00:00 Nocturnal Impressions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 20-May 12, 1985). title: Leona E. Prasse, Connoisseur and Curator opening date: 1985-05-28T04:00:00 Leona E. Prasse, Connoisseur and Curator. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 28-August 25, 1985). title: Cleveland Art Comes of Age: 1919-1940 opening date: 1989-06-28T04:00:00 Cleveland Art Comes of Age: 1919-1940. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 28-September 10, 1989). title: Burchfield to Schreckengost: Cleveland Art of the Jazz Age opening date: 2004-03-28T00:00:00 Burchfield to Schreckengost: Cleveland Art of the Jazz Age. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 28-July 18, 2004). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; March 28 - July 18, 2004. "Burchfield to Schreckengost: Cleveland Art of the Jazz Age," no exhibition catalogue. --- PROVENANCE The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1946– footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: This color aquatint is based on a recently discovered watercolor by Carter. One of the most imaginative interpreters of the American scene, Carter typically infused his subjects with a personal, mysterious meaning. The night railroad crossing depicted in this painting may refer to a childhood memory that brought him to a sudden awareness that we do not always control our fate. The night his younger sister died, he was walking home with his father when they came to a railroad crossing. Instead of stopping for a fast approaching train, his father whisked him up and rushed across the tracks, dangerously close to the grinding wheels and hissing steam. “Now looking back,” Carter observed, “it seems that I was made aware of the vastness of the universe and that something more powerful than any one of us was always bearing down upon each life existing at a given time upon this planet.” --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS --- IMAGES