EARL CUNNINGHAM: American Fauve - Heather James Fine Art

EARL CUNNINGHAM 

American Fauve

Published on the occasion of the exhibition 

EARL CUNNINGHAM: American Fauve 

September 8 - October 29, 2011 

Heather James Fine Art 

172 Center Street, Suite 101 

Jackson, Wyoming 83001 

November 25, 2011 - April, 2012 

Heather James Fine Art 

45188 Portola Avenue 

Palm Desert, California 92260 

Catalogue designed by Timothy Tompkins 

www.heatherjames.com

EARL CUNNINGHAM 

American Fauve 

45188 Portola Avenue Palm Desert, CA 92260 760-346-8926 

PO Box 3580 172 Center Street Suite 101 Jackson, WY 83001 307-200-6090 

www.heatherjames.com

1893-1977

INTRODUCTION 

Michael A. Mennello 

Earl Cunningham is a miraculous artist and a true American Fauve and I am extremely excited to have selected Heather James Fine Art to 

share this important collection of American art with the world. The gallery’s stature and reputation are a perfect compliment to the legacy 

of Earl Cunningham. My wife and I began our collection of Cunningham’s work in 1969 with Marilyn purchasing a painting directly from 

the artist. Following Cunningham’s death, we began a quest to purchase as many paintings as possible, eventually capturing the majority of 

Cunningham’s 405 known works. Passionate advocates of Cunningham, we dedicated our time and resources to restoring the paintings and 

preserving the artist’s legacy. In 1998, we opened the Mennello Museum of American Art with a core group of Cunningham paintings central 

to the museum and continuously on display. 

Earl Cunningham and Marilyn Logsdon Mennello in front of the Over Fork Gallery, 1970. 

Photo by Lynda Wilson 

10

INTRODUCTION 

Chip Tom - Curator 

Twenty years ago while living and working in Switzerland, I was introduced to the wonderful paintings of Earl Cunningham at the U.S. 

Embassy. Although visiting the ambassador on other official business, I could not stop staring at the Cunninghams. These paintings were 

quintessential American, and perfect representatives of U.S. art from the twentieth century. Cunningham depicted the Eastern seaboard in a 

personal style that included unique scale changes and bold usages of color. When looking at the representational paintings and breaking them 

down into large blocks of color they are very modern and fresh. It is a pleasure and honor for Heather Sacre, James Carona and myself to be 

working with this incredible material. We would like to thank Michael Mennello and his late wife The Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello 

for the opportunity to continue to promote the legacy of this important American Fauve. 

Brick Lighthouse on the Bluff 

c. 1970 

oil on fiberboard 

16 1/2 x 23 inches 

Exhibited: 

Geneva, Switzerland, United States Mission, 

Embassy Residence - Ambassador and Mrs. Morris Abrams, 

United States Department of State, Art in Embassies Program, 1992 

11

EARL CUNNINGHAM’S 

SELF-TAUGHT MODERNISM 

Robert Hobbs 

The paintings of the Maine-born self-taught marine painter Earl Cunningham (1893-1977) 

are distinguished for incorporating significant aspects of mainstream modern art, particularly 

the high keyed coloristic work of the Post-Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh and the French 

Fauves. Known for his visionary scenes of both Maine and Florida, Cunningham created an art 

that belies the once widely endorsed view regarding self-taught art’s presumed lack of erudition. 

Although he was certainly an autodidact in his art and semi-literate, as his occasionally recorded 

personal journal testifies, Cunningham’s work is not lacking in sophistication, and he himself 

was not unaware of mainstream avant-garde art developments, as his own art so clearly indicates. 

Since the 1920s Cunningham maintained a messianic zeal about his work, an approach 

most clearly appreciated by considering his great desire to have a museum devoted to it. 1 

Although he might have joked about this imaginary museum, he was also deadly serious about 

it and his identity as an artist. Often he would wear a beret as a way of reinforcing his artistic 

identity, and when he painted, he would don an artist’s smock with a crest emblazoned on its 

back. The crest, with the addition of the words “Over Fork Over,” was the same family seal he 

himself had devised and used to advertise the gallery comprised of his paintings, located next 

door to his antique shop. 

The museum as the legitimate future repository for Cunningham’s paintings can be 

credited as a basis for his great desire to achieve a range of subjects in his marines, to create a 

wondrous sense of fantasy about the past, and to achieve a subtle and disarmingly charming 

critique of the present, thereby representing in his art a renewed symbolic genesis of the 

United States’ history. His paintings re-create aspects of an idealized and fanciful past to 

provide halcyon views of what America could have been and might still be. In many paintings 

Cunningham symbolically reenacts America’s beginnings by bringing early Norse explorers 

and Native Americans together with the late–nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century sailing 

vessels of his youth. To reinforce the great antiquity of the Norse ships, the artist would often 

paint patches on their sails. 

The sense of nostalgia pervading these works is key to the way Cunningham re-presents 

the world rather than merely reflecting it. Although the term “memory painter” is often used 

for such individuals as Cunningham, in his case it is particularly confusing because it suggests 

his creations are mere reflections of his youth rather than highly symbolic, even necessary 

reconstitutions of it. Calling him a memory painter trivializes and invalidates his creations, 

implying his broad cultural reassessments are merely charming and inaccurate recollections. 

preferred to call him an “American Fauve” after the early twentieth-century group of French 

colorists around Henri Matisse. While Cunningham was innocent of such established academic 

techniques as one-point perspective and classical ways of rendering human anatomy, he was 

sophisticated in employing a number of ideas germane to modern art, so his naiveté was very 

knowing. 

When Cunningham signed a painting “American Primitive” 2 and later when he had 

business cards printed with the designation “Primitive Artist,” he set up tensions between 

intuitive art and tongue-in-cheek postmodernist practices—those knowingly ironic approaches 

often taking specific artistic categories and genres as subjects for their work—and he did so 

decades before postmodernist art was developed and ratified as a critical approach. His self 

-awareness of his special contradictory status indicates a sophistication at odds with the usual 

expectations concerning vernacular artists, and this acute understanding of being both an insider 

and an outsider points to the fluidity of language in the twentieth century, when naiveté and 

sophistication are not always polarities. 

By employing the term “Primitive Artist” to refer to himself, Cunningham doubles the 

codes for vernacular art with the goal of employing one to reinforce the other. This designation, 

however, which is characteristically used by a member of the mainstream culture to refer to 

someone who is marginalized, serves the reverse function in Cunningham’s case of questioning 

the authenticity of his work. The doubling of sophisticated and vernacular codes continues to be 

evident in his re-appropriation of the so-called folk-art forms employed by many modern artists, 

including the Fauves, and in his reliance on the tradition practiced by Edward Hicks, Grandma 

Moses, and Joseph Pickett. Depending on one’s point of view, Cunningham’s approach can be 

considered an appropriation of modernism, a re-appropriation of the vernacular that modern art 

itself had appropriated, a revival of the American folk-art tradition as seen in the works of Hicks 

and others, and a survival of the nineteenth-century traditions Cunningham himself continues. 

Of course, his tactic is representative of all these attitudes, considered singly or in combination. 

Although Cunningham was self-taught, he was definitely not naïve; and although he was selfaware 

of his status as a vernacular artist, he remained an intuitive painter who attempted to 

synthesize his experiences in a visual form. Thus, Cunningham was both marginalized and 

mainstream at the same time. Perhaps, because of this contingent status, Cunningham put 

a great deal of emphasis on his handmade frames, modeled on nineteenth-century American 

Empire-style ogee ones, so that they were imposing enough to circumscribe and separate his 

Left: Earl Cunningham in the gallery of his shop, 1970. Photo by Jerry Uelsmann 

13

world by maintaining it as special and semiprivate preserve. 

Although the noted American surrealist photographer Jerry Uelsmann, who 

documented in 1970 Cunningham’s antique shop, studio, and gallery for the artist’s first museum 

exhibition at the Loch Haven Art Center in Orlando (now the Orlando Museum of Art) could 

not “imagine Cunningham reading art books,” 3 the artist did come in contact with modern art 

through a number of sources, including printed matter, and embraced a number of its tenets in 

his painting. Even though he may have picked up ideas from the comments and questions of 

customers visiting his antique shop, Cunningham most likely became acquainted with modern 

art from the surprising number of articles on the subject published in Life magazine, beginning 

in the late 1930s. Uelsmann remembers seeing sacks of Life, Collier’s, and National Geographic 

magazines in Cunningham’s antique shop, “so many in fact that it was dangerous.” 4 

In addition to Life, Cunningham had the opportunity to know some modern works 

of art through large second-hand framed reproductions he sold in his shop. In one Uelsmann 

photograph of Cunningham’s shop, there is a reproduction of a late Maurice de Vlaminck being 

offered for sale. Considering the presence of this image in the shop, it is possible Cunningham 

sold, over the years, reproductions of many popular works by Vincent van Gogh, Matisse, and the 

Impressionists that were widely circulated at the time. Repeated access to these reproductions 

would have exposed him to some basic modern art concepts such as a high-keyed color palette, 

and this familiarity helps to explain the penchant for saturated hues in his own paintings. 

Cunningham could have also come in contact with basic attitudes about modern art 

found in such Walt Disney animated films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and 

Fantasia (1940). Since he made paintings of Disney’s seven dwarfs at some point between 

the late ‘30s and early ‘50s, he was no doubt acquainted with the film, the intensity and range 

of its colors and its sense of fantasy. 5 Because Cunningham did not accept commissions, 

the decision to re-create images of Disney’s dwarfs, without doubt, was done under his own 

initiative. Cunningham’s knowledge of this film is crucial to an understanding of his overall 

work because it indicates a familiarity with expressionistic ideas, particularly evident in the 

forest scene early in the film when the huntsman takes Snow White outside the palace and 

deserts her. In this segment, the forest assumes some characteristics of Charles Burchfield’s 

early whimsical paintings, particularly the device of repeating outlines around trees and plants to 

suggest spiritual emanations and sometimes to reveal incipient anthropomorphic features. Even 

though the latter do not occur in Cunningham’s work, his staggered sets of outlines are readily 

apparent in some early paintings and are relevant to his overall style. This stylistic device 

found in Burchfield’s work and some of Disney’s films is indicative of Cunningham’s indirect 

connections with both synaesthesia and the art of Russian Expressionist Wassily Kandinsky, 

who wished to establish equivalences between color, shape, and sound, and in Cunningham’s 

work it points to the artist’s attempt to move beyond surface appearances in order to reveal 

a more profound cross-section of the world he was conjuring in his paintings. In fact, Snow 

White and Fantasia could have served Cunningham as short courses in modern art’s seemingly 

arbitrary intense colors, which were originated in the work of Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and 

the Fauves. 

In consideration of the sophistication of Cunningham’s work, it is not farfetched to 

align it with the highly subtle and remarkable ideas of the French Symbolist movement, which 

provided Gauguin and Matisse, among others, with a rationale for employing saturated hues. 

But if one recognizes how profoundly these Symbolist concepts permeated popular culture, 

including animated cartoons, mass media advertising, and fashion, their indirect impact on 

Cunningham seems far more plausible. The reason for pointing out their relevance to his art is 

not simply to elevate his paintings by association, even though that might be a residual effect, 

but to point out how Cunningham has claimed for vernacular art some of the same avant-garde 

concepts disseminated throughout the culture. In his work, then, Cunningham invokes some 

of the original Symbolist concepts, such as the absolute reality of the abstract components of 

painting, such as shape and color. Although he never relinquished the realm of appearances in 

his art, he does revel in the abstract power of color as his saffron oceans and skies, raspberry bays, 

and chocolate waterways so eloquently testify. 

Cunningham’s relation to color bespeaks the strong convictions he had about the 

world and the ideal realm he was depicting in his art. The saturated hues in his art imply a 

deep involvement with his subject to the point that he does not take time to modulate colors 

but instead prefers to use them in large doses to convey strong feelings. The fresh and intense 

color in his art supports his Edenic subject matter by signifying a world created anew, unspoiled 

and full of intense light. His color also has the distinct psychological advantage of suggesting 

contradictory ways of approaching his dreamscapes. It may be seen as paralleling psychologist 

C.G. Jung’s advice to a patient constructing a mandala “not to be afraid of bright colors, . . . 

[because] vivid colors seem to attract the unconscious.” 6 The question of whether color makes 

the dream more real or whether it heightens its unreality and thus guarantees its status as a 

14

dream is moot. And this oscillation between extended dream and heightened reality may have 

been one of the main attractions color had for Cunningham. 

In most of his works Cunningham employed a dominant hue to form an embracing 

ambience capable of imbuing and embracing all his pictorial elements as well as subsuming 

them under its aegis. While the intensity of color in his painting is indebted to popular-culture 

descendants of Fauvist art, his handling of it can be traced to the tradition of Tonalism, an elitist 

artistic trend beginning in the 1880s and continuing into the teens of the twentieth century, 

most notably through the leading example of Whistler’s nocturnes. Although Cunningham 

did not perpetuate the blurred forms, grayed out colors, and poetic intimate scenes of the 

Tonalists, he did sustain their embracing environments and closely aligned hues, albeit in a 

heightened palette differing significantly from their overall gentle and genteel effect. Moreover, 

he sustained the Tonalist desire to create protected and idealized retreats into the past, even 

though his subject matter differs markedly from the aristocratic, neurasthenic women often 

associated with works by such New England Tonalists as Thomas Dewing. 

When Cunningham decided to create his self-taught art for a museum setting, he 

internalized a range of the then current attitudes about these institutions, including making 

art a special and restricted refuge from daily life. Even though he contextualized his paintings 

in his gallery by creating a passageway to it through an anteroom of nautical equipment, his 

works existed in a private space, which emphasized both their formal qualities and the ensuing 

relationships between them. Just as a museum might transform crucifixes into sculpture, thereby 

rendering the sacred prosaic, so Cunningham’s gallery reinforced the universal character of his 

art and connoted its lasting value. While this attitude might be devastating for a venerated 

religious object, it reinforced the idealism and abstraction found in Cunningham’s figurative 

work and also exaggerated its symbolic import as an Edenic view of America’s past. 

Even with the great amount of lucid detail populating his paintings, Cunningham 

maintained a pervading interest in the ways objects function as symbols, and for this reason he 

subsumed details under a general interaction of land and sea. Traditionally, the sea symbolizes 

mobility, change, and freedom. It is an open-ended sign full of possibilities and limited in the 

visual arts only by the horizon line or by land. The harbor often takes on the biblical overtones 

of a safe refuge. Although essentially out of harm’s way, the harbors in Cunningham’s art are still 

subject to the strong winds that cause sailing crafts to heel, revealing their red hulls. Land, in 

this equation, is usually only an adjunct to the many harbors populating these scenes, and these 

structures remain front-stage-center in these works. One could thus argue that Cunningham is 

a preeminent painter of harbors rather than the sea, since the comforts and security they offer 

are very important to him. In fact, the foreground areas of land adjoining his prominent harbors 

in his marine paintings contain, control, and limit views of the sea, making this large body of 

water subservient to them. 

To conclude: more than a mere treasure trove of his own past experiences, Cunningham’s 

museum of memories is an overall qualitative re-conception of them. His art distills not only 

his own experiences but also for his understanding of America’s past. The result is a collection of 

compelling metaphors of regeneration, attained through a harmonious reconciliation of notable 

differences. With their many formal alliances with such modern art movements as Fauvism, 

Cunningham’s oxymoronic works bespeak great sophistication within the limits of a self-taught 

style, thereby demonstrating the fact that seemingly childlike forms do not necessarily connote 

naïve approaches. Even though Cunningham was semi-literate and certainly marginalized from 

the mainstream world, he was versed in aspects of modern culture and its traditions; in his art 

he achieves a number of the idealistic values associated with an Edenic world that the dominant 

culture lacked, thereby providing an implicit critique of it. Whereas some artists create viable 

images of the future, Cunningham re-conceives the past in his art as a halcyon realm in which 

the American genesis can be ritualistically reenacted. In his paintings he reinvigorates clichés, 

imbuing them with conviction, thus enabling his viewers to see already familiar and at times 

hackneyed cultural norms from a fresh perspective and thereby providing this audience a means 

for engaging and even empathizing with them. 

1 Several decades after his death, Cunningham’s dream was given tangible form by the perspicacious and assiduous collectors, the 

Honorable Marilyn Mennello and her husband Michael Mennello, who began shortly after the artist’s death adding to their collection of 

his art by acquiring as many works in the estate as possible plus his papers and the personal effects related to his art and his St. Augustine 

antique shop on St. George Street called “Over Fork Gallery.” In 1998 the non-profit Mennello Museum of American Art opened its 

doors, and its historical and cultural was recognized by members of the Orlando city counsel , when they assumed the ownership and 

operation of the Museum. 

2 Cunningham’s second museum exhibition in 1974 was subtitled “American Primitive.” The exhibition included over two hundred 

paintings. According to museum director John Surovek, the artist determined the title for this exhibition. 

3 Jerry Uelsmann, telephone interview with Robert Hobbs, 17 August 1991. 

4 Ibid. 

5 Although early snapshots of these paintings are extant, the works themselves have not been located. 

6 C.G. Jung, Mandala Symbolism, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 10. 

15

PAINTINGS

Seminole Paradise 

c. 1955 

oil on masonite 

17 x 41 in. 

Provenance: 

Collection of Mary Demetree 

Collection of Michael A. Mennello, Winter Park, FL. 

Collection of Michael A. Mennello and 

The Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello, Winter Park, FL. 

Exhibited: 

Atlanta, Georgia, High Museum of Art, Earl Cunningham: Painting an American Eden, 

1994, No. 27; 

Traveled to: 

West Palm Beach, Florida, Norton Gallery of Art, 1994 

Orlando, Florida, Orlando Museum of Art, 1995 

Rockland, Maine, The Farnsworth Art Museum, 1997 

Greenberg, Pennsylvania, Westmorland Museum of Art, 1997 

Columbia, South Carolina, McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1998 

Orlando, Florida, The Mennello Museum of American Art, Earl Cunningham’s 

America, 2009 

19

Railroad Bridge 

date unknown 


16 x 20 inches 

Provenance: 




20

Safe Harbor 

1935 

oil on canvas board 

16 x 25 in. 

Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Orlando, Florida, The Mennello Museum of American Art, 

Earl Cunningham: His Carefree American World, 1986 

Traveled to: 

Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville Museum of Art, Sept.-Nov. 1987 

Daytona Beach, Florida, Museum of Arts and Sciences, April-June, 1988 

Santa Clara, California, Triton Museum of Art, Dec. 1988-Feb. 1989 

Monterey, California, Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, Feb.-May 1989 

Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville Museum of Art, Oct.-Nov. 1989 

Lakeland, Florida, Polk Museum of Art, Dec. 1989-Feb. 1990 

Huntington, West Virginia, Huntington Museum of Art, May-July 1990 

23

Jungle House 

c. 1965 

oil on board 

15 1/2 x 20 inches 

Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Museum of Art, A Separate Reality: Florida Eccentrics, 

April-July1987; 

Traveled to: 

Orlando, Florida, Valencia Community College, Aug.-Sept.1987 

Tallahassee, Florida, Fine Arts Gallery and Museum, Florida State University, Oct.1987 

24

Morning Expedition 

c. 1940 


21 1/2 x 28 inches 

Provenance: 




Exhibited: 


April-July1987 

Traveled to: 


27

House Boat No. 3 

c. 1960 


20 1/4 x 24 inches 

Provenance: 




28

Early Explorers 

c. 1944 



Provenance: 




29

Blue Waterfall 

c. 1975 



Provenance: 




Exhibited: 


April-July1987 

Traveled to: 



31

Sunrise at Old Brick Lighthouse 

date unknown 


18 1/4 x 36 inches 

Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Mystic, Connecticut, Mystic Seaport Museum, Earl Cunningham: His Carefree American World, 

sponsored by the Mid-America Arts Alliance: Exhibits USA, Nov. 1988-March 1989 

Traveled to: 

Little Rock, Arkansas, the Arkansas Art Center, April-June 1989 

Solomans, Maryland, Calvert Maritime Museum, July-Aug. 1989 

Midland, Texas, Museum of the Southwest, Sept. 1989 

Greenville, North Carolina, Gray Art Gallery, East Carolina University, Nov.-Dec. 1989 

Albany, Georgia, Albany Museum of Art, Dec. 1989-Jan. 1990 

Breckenridge, Texas, Breckenridge Fine Arts Center, June-July 1990 

32

The Watch Tower 

c. 1960 



Provenance: 




34

Off the Coast of White Lighthouse Point 

c. 1950 


17 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches 

Provenance: 




35

Six Indians in Three Canoes 

c. 1940 



Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Tallahassee, Florida, The Capitol, Office of the Commissioner of Education Betty Castor, April 1987-Nov. 1988 

36

The Pink Hotel 

c. 1940 


16 x 31 3/4 inches 

Provenance: 




37

Brick Lighthouse on the Bluff 

c. 1970 


16 1/2 x 23 inches 

Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Geneva, Switzerland, United States Mission, Embassy Residence - Ambassador and Mrs. Morris Abrams, 


40

Life on the Waterfront 

c. 1955 



Provenance: 




Exhibited: 



Traveled to: 







43

Sailing By Woodpecker Hollow 

1970 



Provenance: 




Exhibited: 


44

Looking Over Woodpecker Hollow 

1970 



Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Southern Arts Federation, Jan. 1987 

45

Georgia Village South Side 

c. 1930 



Provenance: 

Collection of Dr. Faisal Fakih 




Exhibited: 


47

The Hokona Out of South Carolina 

c. 1945 


17 3/4 x 24 inches 

Provenance: 




Exhibited: 



Traveled to: 







48

Beach Party 

c. 1940 


11 x 26 1/2 inches 

Provenance: 




51

Royal Blue Water of New England 

c. 1930 


14 1/2 x 32 inches 

Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Geneva, Switzerland, United States Mission, Embassy Residence - Ambassador and Mrs. Morris Abrams, 


52

Winter’s Day at Yellow Cabin, Series II 

c. 1950 



Provenance: 




54

Homeward Bound 

1970 


13 1/2 x 16 inches 

Provenance: 




55

Blue Bridge Island 

date unknown 



Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Orlando, Florida, The Mennello Museum of American Art, Earl Cunningham: His Carefree American World, 1986 

Traveled to: 






57

Schooners Off Florida Coast (Offshore Schooners, Series I) 

1970 



Provenance: 




Exhibited: 



Traveled to: 







58

Earl Cunningham in his shop, 1970. Photo by Jerry Uelsmann

Gabriel’s Landing 

c. 1965 


17 1/2 x 28 inches 

Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Museum of Art, A Separate Reality: Florida Eccentrics, April-July1987 

Traveled to: 



66

The Narrow Road 

c. 1960 


11 x 26 5/8 inches 

Provenance: 




69

Dog Track Cabin 

c. 1972 


12 x 15 1/4 inches 

Provenance: 




70

Day’s End at Coast Guard Station, Series III 

1950 


12 x 23 3/4 inches 

Provenance: 




73

Yellow Water, Series I 

1970 



Provenance: 




74

Black Schooner Sailing at Full Speed 

c. 1960 


15 1/4 x 15 inches 

Provenance: 


Collection of Michael A. Mennello and The Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello, Winter Park, FL 

Exhibited: 


75

Eight Little Indians 

1965 


10 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches 

Provenance: 




76

Houseboat at Shore 

c. 1945 



Provenance: 


Collection of Michael A. Mennello and The Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello, Winter Park, FL 

Exhibited: 

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Museum of Art, A Separate Reality: Florida Eccentrics, April-July1987 

Traveled to: 



77

Chickie Village Portrait 

c. 1960 


18 1/4 x 24 inches 

Provenance: 




78

Red Roof Inn 

c. 1960 



Provenance: 


Collection of Michael A. Mennello and The Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello, Winter Park, FL. 

Exhibited: 


80

New England Fishing Village, Series I 

c. 1930 



Provenance: 




81

At the Mouth of the Yellow River 

1970 



Provenance: 




Exhibited: 

Orlando, Florida, The Mennello Museum of American Art, Earl Cunningham: His Carefree American World, 1986 

Traveled to: 





Lakeland, Florida, Polk Museum of Art, Dec. 1989-Feb. 1990 


82

Springtime Fantasy 

c. 1968 



Provenance: 

Collection of Dr. Faisal Fakih 




Exhibited: 


85

Red Roofed Bridge 

c. 1950 



Provenance: 




89

Red Boat House on Tree Lined Canal 

date unknown 


12 1/4 x 24 1/4 inches 

Provenance: 




90

The Landing 

c. 1960 



Provenance: 




92

Green Three Master Rounding S. Point 

c. 1960 



Provenance: 




93

Winter’s Day at Yellow Cabin, Series I 

c. 1950 



Provenance: 




94

Sunrise at Spoonbill Point 

c. 1960 


16 x 31 3/4 inches 

Provenance: 




97

Double Pine Island 

1965 


12 x 15 1/4 inches 

Provenance: 




99

Boat Lodges, Seminole Camp 

c. 1966 


17 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches 

Provenance: 




100

101

Ocean Walk 

c. 1969 



Provenance: 




103

Arctic Storm 

c. 1969 



Provenance: 




104

105

Green Warehouse Dock 

c. 1960 



Provenance: 




107

Storm Clouds 

c. 1956 



Provenance: 




108

Untitled 

1950 

oil on plywood 

13 x 11 1/8 inches 

Provenance: 




109

York Harbor Boat House 

c. 1955 



Provenance: 




Exhibited: 



Traveled to: 







111

Little Island Inlet 

c. 1958 


20 x 36 1/2 inches 

Provenance: 




112

EXHIBITION HISTORY 

140 paintings have been shown in a variety of exhibitions at the following locations: 

1970 The Paintings of Earl Cunningham, Loch Haven Art Center, Orlando, Florida, 

May 31-July 5, 1970 

1974 Earl Cunningham: American Primitive, Museum of Arts & Sciences, Daytona 

Beach, Florida (200 paintings), August 8-September 5, 1974 

1978 Earl Cunningham Retrospective, St. Augustine Art Association Gallery, 

October 29-November 15, 1978 

1979 Teresa Paffe Collection of Earl Cunningham Paintings, The Overfork Gallery, 1004 

Ponce de Leon Boulevard 

1979-80 Earl Cunningham Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Florida History, 

Tallahassee, December, 1979- February, 1980 

1980 One painting on loan from the Permanent Collection of the Museum of American 

Folk Art, NYC to Tampa Museum of Art, January, 1980 

1986 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World presented by 

The Museum of American Folk Art and The Center for American Art, New York 

University at 80 Washington Square East Galleries, New York University 

(66 paintings), March 11-April 4, 1986 

1986 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Jacksonville Art 

Museum, Jacksonville, Florida, October 12-26, 1986 

1987 A Separate Reality: Florida Eccentrics, Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 

(23 paintings), April 23-July 5, 1987 

1987 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Jacksonville Art 

Museum, Jacksonville, Florida, September 17-October 31, 1987 

1987 Separate Reality: Florida Eccentrics, Fine Arts Gallery and Museum, Florida 

State University, Tallahassee, Florida, October 2-25, 1987 

1987-88 Office of the Commissioner of Education Betty Castor, The Capitol, Tallahassee 

Florida (19 paintings), April 1987-November, 1988 

1988 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Museum of Art and 

Sciences, Daytona Beach, Florida (65 paintings), March 24-May 31, 1988 

1988-89 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Traveling Exhibit 

sponsored by Mid-America Arts Alliance: Exhibits USA, Mystic Seaport Museum, 

Mystic, Connecticut (45 paintings), November 19, 1988-March 15, 1989 

1988-89 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Triton Museum of 

Art, Santa Clara, California (60 paintings), December 10, 1988-February 4, 1989 

1989 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Monterey Peninsula 

Museum of Art, Monterey, California (60 paintings), February 17-May 14, 1989 

1989 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, The Arkansas Art 

Center, Little Rock, Arkansas (40 paintings), April 20- June 4, 1989 

1989 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Calvert Marine 

Museum, Solomans, Maryland (40 paintings), July 20-August 21, 1989 

1989 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Mengei International 

Museum of World Folk Art, La Jolla, California (60 paintings), August 1-Sept 15, 1989 

1989 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Museum of the 

Southwest, Midland, Texas (40 paintings), September 1-22, 1989 

1989 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Huntsville Museum of 

Art, Huntsville, Alabama (60 paintings), October 8- November 12, 1989 

1989 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Gray Art Gallery, East 

Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina (40 paintings), Nov 3- Dec 1, 1989 

1989-90 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Polk Museum of Art, 

Lakeland, Florida (60 paintings), December 9-February 18, 1990 

1989-90 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Albany Museum of 

Art, Albany, Georgia (40 paintings), December 17-January 28, 1990 

1990 Folk Art Traditions: Three Contemporary Masters, Federal Board Gallery, 

Washington, D.C. (10 paintings), January 23- March 26, 1990 

1990 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Huntington Museum 

of Art, Huntington, West Virginia (60 paintings), May 20- July 15, 1990 

1990 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Breckenridge Fine 

Arts Center, Breckenridge, Texas (40 paintings), June 9- July 10, 1990 

1990 Earl Cunningham (2 paintings), U.S. Embassy, Luxembourg, August 1990-August 1992 

1991 Earl Cunningham (4 paintings), U.S. Embassy, Caracus, Venezuela, Ambassador and 

Mrs. Skol, August 1990-1992 

1992 Earl Cunningham (4 paintings), U.S. Mission in Geneva, Embassy Residence- 

Ambassador and Mrs. Morris Abrams, August 1990-August 1992 

1992 Earl Cunningham (1893-1977): His Carefree American World, Tampa Museum of 

Art, Tampa, Florida (60 paintings), February 2 - April 6, 1992 

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1994 Earl Cunningham: Painting an American Eden, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 

Georgia (46 paintings), February 11 - June 18, 1994 

1994 Earl Cunningham: Painting an American Eden, Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm 

Beach, Florida (46 paintings), July 22 - September 11, 1994 

1995 Earl Cunningham: Painting an American Eden, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, 

Florida (46 paintings), September 30 - November 5, 1995 

1996-97 Earl Cunningham: Painting an American Eden, The Farnsworth Art Museum, 

Rockland, Maine (46 paintings), November 10, 1996 - February 2, 1997 

1997 Earl Cunningham: Painting an American Eden, Westmoreland Museum of Art, 

Greenburg, Pennsylvania (46 paintings), February 9 - April 20, 1997 

1998 Earl Cunningham: Painting an American Eden, McKissick Museum, University of 

South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina (46 paintings), January 11 - March 2, 1998 

2007 Earl Cunningham’s America, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., 

August 6 - November 4, 2007 

2008 Earl Cunningham’s America, American Folk Art Museum, New York City, New York, 

March 4 - August 31, 2008 

2008 Earl Cunningham’s America, Fenimore Museum, Cooperstown, New York, 

September 26 - December 31, 2008 

2009 Earl Cunningham’s America, The Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, 

Florida, March 6 - August 2, 2009 

2011 Earl Cunningham: American Fauve, Heather James Fine Art, Jackson, Wyoming, 

September 8 - October, 2011 

2011-12 Earl Cunningham: American Fauve, Heather James Fine Art, Palm Desert, California, 

November 25, 2011 - April, 2012 

117

CHRONOLOGY 

1893 June 30. Born Erland Ronald Cunningham in Edgecomb, Maine, near Boothbay 

Harbor, fifty-nine miles from Portland. Parents are Charles and Elwilda Drake 

Cunningham; there are two older sisters and later, three younger brothers. Their 

father lives and works on the farm that has been in the family since the early 

ninteenth century. According to family tradition, they were of Scottish descent and 

had emigrated to Nova Scotia and then moved south to Maine. 

1906 Leaves home at age thirteen. His mother makes him promise that he will finish the 

eighth grade; his father then pronounces him a man, and he strikes out on his own. 

Makes his living as a tinker and is befriended by the son of the inventor and founder 

of the Diamond Match Company. Returns to Boothbay Harbor for part of each year 

until 1937. 

1909 Lives in a fisherman’s shack on Stratton Island off Old Orchard Beach, Maine. 

Supports himself by peddling and by painting salvaged wood with pictures of boats 

and New England Farms for fifty cents each. Eventually acquires a rowboat, tent, and 

a twenty-two-foot sailboat, which he sails to within fifteen miles of New York City, 

to Jamaica Bay, Sandy Hook, and Long Island Sound, and even up beyond the 

narrows of the Hudson River. 

1912 May 1. Receives a certificate from Hamil Foster School of Automobile Engineering, 

Portland, Maine. Also finds time to study coastal navigation and receives a 

government license as a pilot of harbors and rivers. 

Prior to World War I 

Sails on giant coastal ships, 159 to 250 feet long, schooner-rigged, with four and five 

masts. Travels down the East coast to Florida and ports on the way, carrying coal, 

naval stores, and other cargo. Relates the story that he was once taken by “coaster” 

to Labrador, Canada, where he was put ashore for two weeks to light a huge bonfire 

for the ship on its return. During that time he befriended raccoons, birds, and other 

animals, many of which appear later in his paintings. 

c. 1913 Meets Captain Foster, skipper of the J. P. Morgan family yacht, the Grace, and 

eventually learns to sail the vessel. Saves the Grace from possible disaster by repairing 

a shackle that had been undone by the weather. In return for Earl’s diligence, Captain 

Foster goes to Boston and returns with an eleven-foot mahogany-topped white cedar 

canoe, a gift from the Morgan family. Later, a loan from Captain Foster enables him 

to buy a twenty-two-foot sailboat. 

1913 June. Postcard from Boothbay Harbor mentions traveling “from Portland, Maine to 

Boothbay Harbor on the Grace…Captain Foster’s daughter and I went to the fire 

around nine o’clock at night June 1913.” Fire destroys a large hotel called the 

Menawarmet. 

1914 August. Stays in cabin at Pendleton homestead, Crescent Beach Road, Anastasia 

island, Florida. That same year sells a painting for eight dollars. 

1915 June 29. Marries Iva Moses, a piano teacher, whom he calls Maggie throughout their 

marriage. Buys a thirty-five-foot cabin cruiser named the Hokona, on which he 

and his bride live. Drives a truck for the navy during World War I and is sent to 

Jacksonville, Florida, to test an instrument used to detect alloys in junk metals. While 

on this job visits St. Augustine for the first time. 

1916 Hokona is docked near Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Photograph of chickens bears 

inscription “product of our farm 1916.” 

1917 Photograph of the vessel Bay State grounded on the rocks, Cape Elizabeth, near 

Portland, Maine. Later uses this scene in a painting. 

1918-c.1928 

For a decade after World War I spends the winters in Florida at Tampa Bay, Ceader 

Keys, and St. Augustine, digging for Indian relics and collecting opalized coral to take 

back to Maine to sell. Also catches fiddler crabs on the beaches of Anastasia Island, 

Florida, which he preserves and takes back to Maine. 

1919 In Freeport, Maine, and Schenectady, New York. 

1920 Lives in Freeport, Maine. Has several buildings and a sawmill. 

1921 July. Photograph taken in Freeport, Maine, with the truck named Dirigo: The Good Barge. 

July 20. Travels between Florida and Miami. 

August 6. Visits Niagara Falls. 

August 8. Travels the coast of Lake Erie beyond Lackawanna, New York. 

October 14. Spends time in Ohio; the Cunninghams husk eight hundred bushels of 

corn for Mr. Riddles. 

1922 April. Visits Cartersville, Georgia. 

August. Photograph take near Cartersville shows Etowah burial mounds in the 

background. On the reverse Cunningham notes, “Found lots of things here: 1922-23 

24-25.” 

1923-24 Continues to visit Anastasia Island and St. Augustine, Florida. Stays long enough to 

invest in a small motorized tractor. 

1925 Rents a house in the district of West Augustine, St. Augustine, Florida, for five years; 

catches fiddler crabs and sends them to Maine as well as all over the U.S. Continues to 

call Maine home; moves from Freeport to Boothbay Harbor. 

October 19. Earl’s brother Donald dies in a sawmill accident. Family situation 

becomes difficult. 

c. 1920s-40 

Maintains a twenty-five acre farm in Maine, which he names “Fort Valley,” and plans 

a museum. 

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1936 Sells his house in Maine. Some time after this date his marriage ends in divorce. 

1938 January. Again visits Cartersville, Georgia. 

1940 Sells Fort Valley farm and purchases a fifty-acre farm in Waterboro, South Carolina 

Has museum project under way when World War II begins. Farm is converted to 

raise chickens for the army; nevertheless continues to paint. 

1949 Moves to 51-55 St. George Street, St. Augustine, Florida, and establishes Over Fork 

Gallery. Landlady, close friend, and patron is fifty-one-year-old Theresia (Tese) Paffe, 

who lives upstairs. 

c. 1950 Paints series of twenty pictures (now lost) of Native Americans for the Michigan 

Historical Society. Notes on back of a photograph of Mackinac Island, Michigan: 

“I have none of them now. They sold for $250.00 each. Each was different.” Finds 

Native-American stone figure of bison in Georgia mountains. 

1972 September 19. Is requested to move by the first of the year by Theresia Paffe. 

1973 Both he and Theresia Paffe move to a shop-home-studio on Florida State Road AIA\ 

(U.S. 1), which is also 1004 N. Ponce De Leon Boulevard, St. Augustine. 

1974 August 8-September 5. Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona Beach, Florida, holds 

exhibition “Earl Cunningham: American Primitive,” featuring over two hundred 

paintings. According to museum director John Surovek, the artist wishes the 

paintings to be hung from floor to ceiling. 

1975 Notes in diary: “Counted my paintings today August 15. I have 330 all in frames.” 

1976 June 3. Notes in diary: “Finished all paintings today making me 405 on hand now.” 

1977 December 29. During a visit from his nephew Caroll Windslow and his wife, Earl 

Cunningham shoots himself. His funeral takes place January 3, 1978. 

1953 February 1. Oil painting entitled American Primitive offered for sale in catalogue of 

St. Augustine Art association. 

1955 Exhibits Hilton Head. Notes on back of painting, “Was in the National Show in St. 

Augustine, Florida, April 1955. Private Showing.” 

1959 February 12. Takes pride in becoming a member of the International Oceanographic 

Foundation and has certificate framed, even though membership in the foundation is 

similar to belonging to the National Geographic Society. 

1960 Has business card printed identifying himself as “Earl R. Cunningham, Zoologist” 

with the word “Specimens” below. Card also bears family crest with the name 

Cunningham; address is listed as 51-53-55 St. George Street. 

1961 January 27. Ships painting entitled The Everglades to Jacqueline Kennedy in the 

White House. Declares its value to be $1,200. 

May 9. Painting sent to Mrs. Kennedy is acknowledged by her personal secretary, 

Letitia Baldrige, in a letter to Cunningham. 

1962 Visits his nephew Carrol Winslow and his wife, Beverly, in Maine. 

1968 Identifies himself on a business card as a “Primitive Artist.” 

1969 November. Meets Marilyn Logsdon Wilson (now Mennello) and her friend Jane Dart; 

is persuaded to sell paintings to both of them. 

1970 May 31-July 5. Loch Haven Art Center, Orlando, Florida (now the Orlando Museum 

of Art), holds Cunningham’s first museum exhibition, “The paintings of Earl 

Cunningham.” Jerry Uelsmann takes a series of photographs of the artist and his 

studio. 

Earl Cunningham, 1970. Photo by Jerry Uelsmann 

119

EARL CUNNINGHAM: American Fauve - Heather James Fine Art

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