This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  A landscape painter strongly influenced by the French Impressionists,
Alson Skinner Clark spent much of his career traveling and living in
foreign countries and then settled in Southern California where he
became a plein-air painter, art educator and muralist. From
there, he also traveled extensively in Mexico and the Southwest.
Alson
Clark was born in Chicago to a prosperous family comfortably supported
by the father's commodities business. He showed early art talent,
which his family encouraged by enrolling him in evening classes at the
Art Institute. They also took him on a two-year trip around the
world where he gained much exposure to European art.
Graduating
from high school, he again enrolled at the Art Institute but unhappy
with his teacher, he left after six months, and in 1896, went to New
York to study with William Merritt Chase at the Art Students
League. He also followed Chase to his own school, which opened
shortly after, and enrolled in the Chase summer school of plein-air
painting at Shinnecock.
In 1898, Alson Clark went to Paris
where he was a student for several months at the Academie Carmen, whose
director was James McNeill Whistler. Although Whistler was a
difficult, demanding personality, Clark respected his teaching, stayed
at the school until it closed, and ever acknowledged Whistler's
influence on his Impressionist style.
In 1901, Clark returned
to America and married Atta Medora McMullin, whom he met when she
modelled for him at Comfort Island, near Watertown, New York, his
family's vacation spot. From 1902 to 1914, they lived in Paris
until the war broke out, and during that time, he took up plein-air
painting. The couple also spent time at Giverny in 1910, and
Clark painted with his friends Lawton Parker, Guy Rose, and Frederick
Frieseke.
Traveling extensively throughout Europe, the Clarks
were supported by successful sales from galleries representing his work
in New York and Chicago. Exhibition venues included the National
Academy of Design, Pennsylvania Academy, Paris Salon and Art Institute
of Chicago. His work included many landscapes, cityscapes,
interiors, and figure studies especially of his wife, who continued to
serve as his model.
Although his work ever showed the influence
of Whistler, on a summer trip to France in 1907 and two years later to
Spain, Clark adopted a much stronger Impressionist style with lighter
palette.
In the spring of 1913 the building of the Panama
Canal inspired the Clarks to go to the Canal Zone, where construction
was nearly complete. Clark decided he wanted to be a part of the
history-making venture, and made connections so that he had nearly open
access to the construction site, labor trains and workers. He
painted furiously in horrendous heat to capture on canvas the final
construction phase of the Canal and its railroad. By June, he had
many works completed and contacted John Trask, Director of the Fine
Arts section of the forthcoming Panama-Pacific International Exposition
in San Francisco. Trask was impressed enough that he gave Clark a
room for solo exhibition of eighteen paintings, which put him in the
rank of only a few other American artists afforded such status: Frank
Duveneck, James Whistler, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam and John
Singer Sargent. The display of his Panama Canal paintings earned Alson
Clark a Bronze Medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in
1915. Some of the paintings, which were huge, he and his wife had
hand-carried out of Europe because of being stranded at the outbreak of
World War I.
The Clarks lived with friends in New England and
visited Charleston, South Carolina in the winter of 1917, just before
the declaration of war by America, and, much impressed by the charm,
culture and history of that area did atmospheric paintings including
Saint Michael's Cathedral. Shortly after, at age forty one, Alson
Clark enlisted in the Navy and, with language ability, was sent to
France as a military photographer. Doing aerial photography, he
dangled from airplanes, an experience that caused him deafness in one
ear.
Told that condition could be solved by living in a warm
climate, he and his wife, in 1919, went to California for the first
time. Settling in Pasadena and renewing his friendship with Guy
Rose, who had returned there in 1914, Alson Clark regained his hearing
and was re-invigorated for painting. Favorite subjects were the
Mission San Gabriel and Mission San Juan Capistrano, and he traveled
the desert and mountain landscapes in California, the Southwest and
Mexico in a rebuilt Dodge truck. In Mexico, he was especially
taken with Cuernavaca and Taxco, doing scenes of the big Taxco
Cathedral.
Clark joined Rose as a teacher at Rose's newly
formed Stickney Memorial School of Art, and in 1921, when Rose had a
stroke, Clark became Director of the School. That same year, in
addition to having a son, Alson Jr., Alson Sr. had his first California
solo exhibition, which was hosted by Earl Stendahl, then regarded as
the most influential dealer in southern California.
In 1925,
Alson Clark took up mural painting, which began with a commission from
the Pasadena Playhouse to paint the stage curtain, 20 feet by 32
feet. This job was followed by a series of murals on the history
of California for the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles, murals at
the Pasadena First Trust and Savings Bank and eight mural-size
paintings for a men's club in Los Angeles. In addition, he
accepted decorative commissions for private homes, designing wall paper
and painting screens and wall murals. He also pursued his own
painting interests, much of it plein air that combined tight drawing
with impressionist strokes. He was untouched by the debate
between modernism and impressionism and stayed with his own approach.
The
Clarks continued with their travels, taking a one-year trip across
America in 1933 and a final trip to Europe in 1935. In 1940, the
Los Angeles County Museum hosted a self-curated retrospective of his
twenty of his paintings. During World War II, he organized
craftsmen to produce military instruments. Following the War, his
health deteriorated, and in March 1949, he had a paralyzing stroke and
died a week later.
Source:
Deborah Epstein Solon, 'The Art & Life of Alson Skinner Clark', American Art Review, March 2005
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940
Martha Severens, The Charleston Renaissance |
This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born in Chicago, Illinois on March 25, 1876, Alson Clark, at age 11
enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, continued in New York City at
the Art Students League, and with William Merritt Chase and Frank
Duveneck.
Late in 1898 he went to Paris for further study at Académie Carmen
under James Whistler. Returning to the U.S. in 1901, he
established a studio in Watertown, New York, and then returned to
Chicago where in 1903 sales in a successful exhibition allowed for
travel in Canada and Europe.
After serving as an aerial photographer in WWI, he settled in southern
California where in 1922 he and Guy Rose formed the teaching faculty of
Pasadena's Stickney Art School. During this period he also had a
studio in Palm Springs. He taught landscape classes at Occidental
College in Eagle Rock in the late 1930s.
Clark died of a heart attack in Pasadena on March 22, 1949. One
of southern California's most renowned painters, his early portraits
and figure studies evince the somber tonalities of Whistler. After
painting in Giverny with Guy Rose and other impressionists, by 1910 his
palette had begun to brighten considerably.
MEMBER
American AA of Paris; Chicago Society of Artists; LA AA; Salmagundi
Club; SWA; Calif PM. Exh: Paris Salon, 1901; Louisiana Purchase Expo
(St Louis), 1904 (bronze medal); AIC, 1906 (solo); PPIE, 1915 (bronze
medal); Calif. Art Club, 1920-30; LACMA, 1922, 1924 (prizes), 1929;
Southwest Museum (LA), 1923 (grand prize); Stendahl Gallery (LA), 1923;
San Diego FA Gallery, 1923, 1937 (solo); Painters of the West (LA),
1924; Pasadena Art Inst., 1925, 1931 (2nd prize), 1933 (1st prize);
Pasadena Society of Artists, 1927; Pasadena Public Library, 1928; LA
AA, 1937; GGIE, 1939; Calif. WC Society, 1940.
COLLECTIONS
Victoria & Albert Museum (London); AIC; LACMA; Muskegon (MI) Art
Gallery; San Diego Museum; Watertown (NY) Public Library; Gardena High
School; CSL; Pasadena Community Theatre; First Nat'l Bank of Pasadena
(mural); Univ. Club (Pasadena); Irvine (CA) Museum; Women's Athletic
Club (LA); Fleischer Museum (Scottsdale); Orange Co. (CA) Museum;
Cathay Circle Theatre, LA (murals). | Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Who's Who in America 1918; Who's Who in California 1928; California Impressionism (Wm. Gerdts & Will South); American Art Annual 1933; Who's Who in American Art 1936-47; Artists of the American West (Samuels); Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs, et Graveurs (Bénézit, E); Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers (Fielding, Mantle); Southern California Artists (Nancy Moure); Plein Air Painters (Ruth Westphal); NY Times, 3-24-1949 (obituary). | | Nearly 20,000 biographies can be found in Artists in California 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes and is available for sale ($150). For a full book description and order information please click here. |
Biography from William A. Karges Fine Art - Carmel:
| Born in Chicago, Alson Clark enrolled at the Art Students League at an early age, following with further study at the Art Students League in New York, and in Paris. With his success in Chicago, Clark was afforded many years of European travel and study.
Returning to the U.S. in 1919, Clark settled in Pasadena where he, along with Guy Rose, taught at the Stickney School in Pasadena. Clark died in 1949, and is remembered as one of southern California’s finest early Impressionists. |
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