Clark, Christopher, The Crap Shooters, oil on canvas, first prize, Best Painting, Florida Federation of Art Annual 1936, reproduced, Sunday New York Times Magazine, May 1936 and exhibited, American Art, at the Rockefeller Center, New York City, 1936.
Christopher Clark, oil on canvas, 30 3/4 by 25 3/4 inches, signed lower right Christopher Clark, 1931.
Christopher Clark was a Florida native, born in Quincy, who lived and worked in Tampa for many years. Clark attended the University of Florida until his junior year when art called and he moved to the Art Students’ League in New York. Nine months later he turned to dancing, on the road with a musical production, Good Morning, Dearie with Clark a featured dancer. As the troupe traveled, he painted, and later had three one man exhibits in New York. In the summer of 1926 Clark was a member of a group of 13 Tampa artists who gathered, with Donald Blake as leader, for weekly field painting trips. In September the group formed an “Artists club” that became part of the Tampa Art Institute where he was exhibition chairman.
The Tampa Morning Tribune, April 29, 1936, published his painting, The Crap Shooters, as one of ten by Florida artists selected in a state-wide competition, for the first National Exhibition of American art to held at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Clark selected a line “I Heard America Singing,” from a poem by Walt Whitman, as the general tittle for a series of paintings, the second of which, The Snake Preacher, depicted a preacher grasping a squirming rattlesnake with his followers in various stages of hysteria. This based on a Florida evangelist who died as a result. The Tampa Tribune (January 4, 1942) quotes Clark. “His study of music ties in nicely with his specialty, figure studies. He endeavors to put on canvas what Bach and the other great masters put into melody…rhythmic flowing impressions accented by definite beats. The jitterbugging figure in his spectacular oil, Miami Beach Jook, the prize winner, characteristic of his theory.” Florida Beach Jook was awarded the Kress medal as the best painting in the 1942 Florida Federation of Art Annual.
Clark painted murals for the Radio City Music Hall in New York, and after a stay in Miami, murals for the Surf Club, and the Charles Baker home in Coconut Grove. From 1945 to 1946 he was an art instructor at the Ringling School of Art where he headed the life and portrait departments. With many of the GIs at the Ringling unhappy with “conditions” at the Ringling, and after a tour of possible sites by a committee of GI’s, Clark opened the Island City School of Art in Key West on June 16, 1947 with 35 students. The school, approved for training under the GI Bill of Rights, was located on the third floor of the old Santaella Cigar Company building on 2nd Street and Flagler Avenue and continued, with William Henry and Gerald Leake as assistants, until the Spring of 1949. When the art collector Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. arrived in Key West in February 1950, Chris Clark was a guest aboard his yacht.
Clark returned to Tampa in the Fall of 1951, opening a studio at 215 Eagle Street, again teaching art classes, and doing portraits of Tampans including Caro Murphy, Mrs. S. L. Flom, Mrs. C.A. Rudisill, Mr. and Mrs. Eliot Fletcher, Mrs. Nelson Mason, Mrs. Charles M. Gray, Mrs. David R. Murphey and Mrs. George P. Tourtellot. For a time, Clark lived on a houseboat studio the, Li-Po.
His art was featured in the Saturday Evening Post and Forbes Magazine. Clark won many prizes at the Florida State Fair, Florida Federation of Art exhibits, and the Tampa Art Institute. A brief review of his painting in the 1942 Florida Federation of Art circuit appeared in the Daytona Evening News (March 11, 1942). “Christopher Clark catches the eye with his lively, ‘Miami Beach Look’ done with a strong resemblance to modernists, Thomas Hart Benton, and Curry, especially in the broad effect of his whirling bathers.”
Born: June 21, 1903, Quincy, Florida. Education: University of Florida; Piedmont College; Art Students League, NYC; with Kenneth Hayes Miller. Membership: Sarasota Art Association; Tampa Art Institute; Art Club of St. Petersburg; Florida Federation of Art; Florida Gulf Coast Artists Group; Ringling School of Art. Exhibits: Florida Federation of Art, 14th Annual, December 1941, Tampa, Miami Beach Jook prize, best figure study; Clearwater Art Museum, November 1942, Florida Beach Jook; Florida Federation of Art 15th Annual, at Norton Gallery, West Palm Beach, December 5, 1942, John C. Norton memorial award, best oil painting, Bayou Boy; Florida Federation of Art, Palm Beach 1942, grand prize, S. H. Kress Award, The Crapshooters; Florida Federation of Art, 15th Annual Exhibit, March 1943, Clearwater Art Museum, Bayou Bay, Everglades Cowboy, Ethel at Breakfast; Florida Federation of Art, Outstanding Art Work by Artists, Jacksonville, 1944, sponsored by Arts Exhibition Club and Art Department of Woman’s Club, oil, Mrs. Devereaux; Florida Gulf Coast Artists Group, nationwide circuit, Miami to Wisconsin, Newark, San Francisco, Syracuse, 1944; Sarasota Art Association, Members Annual Exhibit, March 1945, pastel portrait, Pompeia (Head of a young man); St. Mary’s Hall, 1021 Duval Street, Key West, December 1947, works by students and professionals including Harry Kidd, Burt Garnett, Marie Coppick, Gertrude Laubscher, Elvira Reilly, and instructors Leake, Henry and Clark; Key West, Casa Marina Hotel, March 4, 1948; Florida State Fair, Tampa, February 1952, judge; Tampa Art Institute, January-February 1953, 17 portraits of Tampans; Contemporary Arts Gallery, Pinellas Park, March 1954, figures and portraits; Florida Federation of Art Annual, November 1954, 2nd prize, Study; First Sunshine Festival Painting and Sculpture competition, at Contemporary Arts Gallery, Pinellas Park, April 1955, competition judge; Florida Federation of Art Annual, 1955, 1st prize, Portrait of a Young Poet; Art Club of St. Petersburg, January 1956, 1st prize, modern, Prodigal Son; Clearwater Art Group, 7th Annual Juried Show, Clearwater Chamber of Commerce, March 1956, honorable mention, Prodigal Son; Art Club of St. Petersburg, Members’ Jury Show, January 1957, honorable mention, traditional, Student; Florida State Fair, Fine Arts Exhibit, January 29-February 9, 1957, Jeanne; Tampa Art Institute, best oil, Bayou Bay; Contemporary Arts Gallery, Pinellas Park,1 955, September 1959, Aegean Boy; Florida State Fair, Tampa, work exhibited between 1956-1962; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Directory: Listed in the Tampa City Directory 1943 and 1952 as an artist with studio at 4807 Bayshore Blvd in 1943 and 215 1/2 Eagle in 1952.
Christopher Clark, Study in White, oil on canvas, oil on canvas, 34 by 29 1/2 inches, signed lower right Christopher Clark, 1931
