{
"data": {
"id": 126242,
"accession_number": "1948.460",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "The St. Clair Fire, 1944. Carl Gaertner (American, 1898\u20131952). Oil on canvas; unframed: 71.1 x 121.9 cm (28 x 48 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of H. Fred Gaertner, in memory of Nellie Gaertner, 1948.460. \u00a9 Carl Gaertner",
"current_location": null,
"title": "The St. Clair Fire",
"creation_date": "1944",
"creation_date_earliest": 1944,
"creation_date_latest": 1944,
"artists_tags": [
"May Show",
"male",
"Cleveland School",
"Cleveland Institute of Art (alumni)",
"Cleveland Institute of Art (faculty)"
],
"culture": [
"America, Ohio, Cleveland"
],
"technique": "oil on canvas",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "American Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "American - Cleveland School",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Unframed: 71.1 x 121.9 cm (28 x 48 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"unframed": {
"height": 0.711,
"height_inch": 28,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 1.219,
"width_inch": 48,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 Carl Gaertner",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "signed lower right: Carl Gaertner 1944",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 382038,
"title": "The May Show: 28th Annual Exhibition of Works by Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen",
"description": "The May Show: 28th Annual Exhibition of Works by Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 13-June 9, 1946).",
"opening_date": "1946-04-13T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 705520,
"title": "Work of Cleveland Artists for the 41st Annual Meeting of the College Art Association",
"description": "Work of Cleveland Artists for the 41st Annual Meeting of the College Art Association. The Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 29-31, 1953).",
"opening_date": "1953-01-29T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 518691,
"title": "American Realists",
"description": "American Realists. Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, Canada (organizer) (March 11-April 23, 1961).",
"opening_date": "1961-03-11T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 519945,
"title": "The Homage Show",
"description": "The Homage Show. Cleveland Society of Artists, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 9-November 9, 1962).",
"opening_date": "1962-10-09T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 517431,
"title": "Exhibition of Ohio Painters",
"description": "Exhibition of Ohio Painters. The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH (organizer) (April 4-30, 1967).",
"opening_date": "1967-04-04T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 301224,
"title": "May Show Retrospective - 50 Years",
"description": "May Show Retrospective - 50 Years. The Cleveland Museum of Art (April 23-June 16, 1968).",
"opening_date": "1968-04-23T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": null,
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60515584"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Carl Gaertner Entry Card to 1946 May Show. Cleveland Museum of Art May Show Records, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.",
"page_number": null,
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMS07461"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 560",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1958/page/n104"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 195",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1966/page/n219"
},
{
"citation": "Waldman, Lawrence, and Henry Adams. Strange and Lonely Spaces: Magic Realism in Cleveland 1930 - 1960. 2021.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 62, fig. 38.",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1948.460",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of H. Fred Gaertner, in memory of Nellie Gaertner",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 126242,
"creators": [
{
"id": 4415,
"description": "Carl Gaertner (American, 1898\u20131952)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "A specialist in American scene subject matter, Cleveland-born Carl Gaertner exhibited an early aptitude for drawing. As a high-school student he studied mechanical design, but during his senior year he decided to make painting his primary avocation. In 1920 he enrolled at the Cleveland School of Art, graduating three years later after studying with Henry Keller and Frank Wilcox. In 1925 the school hired Gaertner to teach painting. During the 1920s and 1930s he went on summer painting excursions to Provincetown, Massachusetts, with Ora Coltman and George Adomeit. One of the most widely exhibited artists working in Cleveland, Gaertner showed at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1922\u201353), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia (1924\u201352), the Art Institute of Chicago (1925\u201349), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1943\u201348), and the National Academy of Design (1944\u201350). The Cleveland School of Art organized solo exhibitions of his paintings (1928, 1941), as did the Philadelphia Art Alliance (1948). In 1945 he began a long association with the Macbeth Galleries in New York. In 1952, after experiencing a severe headache while teaching at the art school, he went home and died unexpectedly of a brain hemorrhage.
Transformations in Cleveland Art (CMA, 1996), p. 228",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1898",
"death_year": "1952",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1948-12-30T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1944,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1944",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-07-31 11:40:37.065000"
}
}