Sale 2495 - Illustration Art, December 6, 2018

97 c JOHN FORD CLYMER. The Perfect Christmas Tree. Watercolor and gouache on paper. 268x475 mm; 10 1 / 2 x18 3 / 4 inches. Signed in lower right corner. Glue residue along outer edges and on verso. [4,000/6,000] A beautiful winter landscape by Clymer, presumably created early in his career. The composition is very similar to fellow American illustrator Dale Nichols’s winter landscape “Bringing Home the Tree,” and related images featuring the Nebraska farmstead where he was raised. Clymer, himself, was a great lover of nature, especially the Canadian, Alaskan, and American wilderness, which he incorporated into the many story illustrations and covers he created throughout his career . In the 1930s, he studied with N.C. Wyeth at the Old Howard Pyle School in Wilmington, Delaware, at the Royal Canadian Academy of Art, Ontario, and with Harvey Dunn in Connecticut. After decades of commercial illustration, he dedicated himself to fine art painting and returned to his love of the natural world, chronicling the Northwestern Indians and their territory, winning several awards in the field of Western art .