The solid, scudding clouds overhead in Cunningham's "Gathering Clouds Off Little River Inlet,” 1962, are reminiscent of those painted by fellow Maine native Marsden Hartley. Collection of Marilyn L. and Michael A. Mennello.
:One of the most idiosyncratic and skilled American self-taught artists of the Twentieth Century, Earl Cunningham (1893–1977) used broad, flat space and vivid color to create imaginary, Edenic landscapes filled with the unexpected and unlikely. A folk modernist who drew on his vision of an ideal, sublime past, he painted an unspoiled, serene America.
Whether depicting familiar places in Maine or Florida or recreating historical scenes, Cunningham delighted in taking liberties with perspective, details and the actual appearance of places to construct his whimsical, make-believe world. Thus, pink flamingos roam the Maine Coast; New England saltbox cottages sit at the edge of Florida swamps; Viking ships share harbors with Native American canoes and Yankee schooners, and Seminole Indians wear feathered headbands associated with Maine's Passamaquoddy tribe.
Such juxtapositions suggest Cunningham's idealized view of an integrated nation, where life was simple and elements of modern life were absent.
After years in oblivion, Cunningham's art has become recognized in recent years, culminating in "Earl Cunningham's America," organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where it was on view last year, and now at the American Folk Art Museum's Branch Gallery at Lincoln Square through August 31. Organized by American Art Museum senior curator Virginia M. Mecklenburg, the exhibition showcases nearly 50 of the more than 400 pictures Cunningham created.
"Sunrise at Pine Point, Maine,” circa 1950, sums up many of Cunningham's fond memories of his native state, including ships, pine trees, a candy-striped lighthouse, solid coastal structures and fishermen on the docks. Collection of Ross L. Silverbach.
Born in Edgecomb, Maine, and raised on a farm in nearby Boothbay, Cunningham fiddled with drawings and paintings growing up. Leaving home at 13, he worked at odd jobs and crewed on J.P. Morgan's family yacht and on large schooners plying the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. Early on, he began painting boats and farms on driftwood, which he sold for 50 cents.
After World War I, Cunningham spent time digging for Indian relics and collecting opalized coral in the South, which he sold in Maine. In the 1920s, he organized a museum on his 25-acre Maine farm, "Fort Valley," where he exhibited small paintings on scraps of wood and sold antiques gathered on his travels.
In a typical early work, "New England Autumn," 1928, a 16-by-10-inch oil on fiberboard, vivid colors animate a depiction of solid white houses with lavender roofs set among leafless trees adjacent to rocky terrain, with a brilliant yellow-red sky reflected in an inlet with boats.
