Robert Clunie
Robert Clunie (June 29, 1895 – November, 1984) 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.
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.
[3] 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.
[4] He felt at home in Los Angeles, and spent two months exploring the area before returning to Michigan, determined to relocate to California.
In the spring of 1928, he completed his first Sierra Nevada landscape, entitled Olivas Pack Station, a scene in Lone Pine.
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.
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.
[9] 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.
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."
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.
[13] During the 1930s, Clunie received several commissions to paint large dioramas at the California Exposition & State Fair in Sacramento.
Ansel Adams called one of his Taos paintings, Vaya Con Dios - St. Francis of Assisi Mission - Moonlight a "masterpiece".
[16] 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".
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.
Clunie and his wife purchased property below the Eastern Sierras in Bishop, 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.
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."
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."
