Carroll Cloar

Carroll Cloar was one of the most famous artists to call Memphis home. He was a Realist painter whose works occasionally took on a Surrealist slant. One of his most well-known paintings is My Father is as Big as a Tree, which is owned by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. His paintings are in public and private art collections throughout the county. The Pink Palace Museum has several of his preliminary sketches as well as his army uniform and two of his cameras in our collection.

Cloar was born in Earle, Arkansas in 1913 to a farming family. He moved to Memphis in 1930 to attend Southwestern (now Rhodes College) and study English. After graduation, he traveled around Europe before returning to Memphis to study at Florence McIntyre’s Memphis Academy of Art on Adams Avenue. He followed George Oberteuffer to a new school on Front Street before going…