Clara Stroud, Flamingo Lagoon, watercolor, 15.5 by 11.25 inches. Signed lower left.
Clara Stroud was a Herbertsville, New Jersey painter, teacher, designer, and writer. She, along with her mother, Ida Stroud, were leading advocates and teachers of watercolor. Clara Stroud taught art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, The Traphagan School of Fashion in New York City, East Orange High School, the Plainfield School, and the Newark School of Art. She was art critic for the Keramic Studio News, did illustrations for Everyday Art, and Craftsman Magazine, and designed Christmas cards for Raphael Tuck and Company.
Clara Stroud, At the Out of Doors School, Ringling School of Art, circa 1935, watercolor, 11.5 by 15 inches. Signed lower left.
During the Depression Stroud spent summers in New Jersey and, beginning in 1933, winters studying at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota with Hilton Leech. Two of her Sarasota watercolors were exhibited at the New York Watercolor Club in April 1934. In February 1937 Stroud exhibited at the Pearson Conrad Gallery on South Pineapple Avenue in Sarasota. The exhibit consisted of eleven watercolor scenes of Sarasota, each landscape featuring a different variety of Florida tree or foliage. The Sarasota Herald Tribune, February 17, 1937, commented on her work: “All of the paintings are views in and around the city of Sarasota and form an excellent example of the way everyday scenes are transformed through the eyes of the artist into glimpses of beauty…All of the pictures show clear and brilliant color, and a splendid sense of design in their composition.” The Pearson Conrad Gallery was a landscape gardening shop where other important Sarasota artists exhibited their work.
Clara Stroud, The Fish House, watercolor, 25 by 20 inches. Signed lower right, a second watercolor, Palms, on verso.
In 1938 Stroud was given a solo exhibition of her southern watercolors at the Argent Galleries in New York City. A critic wrote: “In contrast we give you Clara Stroud showing watercolors she made in Florida, at the Argent Galleries. Miss Stroud’s colorings are obviously natural, too. But she has organized and edited them into compositions which are vigorous, direct, and powerful as well as brightly decorative. They bespeak the mystery and glamour of the tropics, and something of that sinister quality which somehow seems part of the locale. But more important, they are complete pictures having their own life as artistic organisms apart from their subject.”
In March 1948 Stroud returned to Sarasota to exhibit her work at the Sarasota Art Association airport galleries.
The Asbury Park Press (June 16, 2001) in reviewing a retrospective exhibit of Clara Stroud and her mother Ida Wells Stroud tilled, Impressionists Take a Bow, said, “they were central to art activity of the Jersey Shore in a wonderful way…the American Watercolor Society still presenting a Stroud prize.”
Born: 1890, New Orleans, Louisiana. Died: September 4, 1984, Brick Township, New Jersey. Education: Pratt Institute, BA, 1912, MA, 1915; studied with Gustave Cimiotti, Winold Reiss, J. Hambidge, Ralph Johonnot; Ringling School of Art with Hilton Leech and Loran Wilford. Membership: Brooklyn Society of Artists; Society of Independent Artists; Florida Federation of Art; Sarasota Art Association; Clearwater Art Museum; St. Augustine Art Association; American Artists Professional League; American Watercolor Society. Exhibits: New York Watercolor Club, annual exhibit, April 1934, Turpentine Still and The Myakka; Sarasota Art Association at Ringling School of Art, February 1935; Ringling School of Art, Annual Student Exhibit, March 1935, first prize, advanced watercolor landscape; Sarasota Art Association, South Pineapple, Sarasota, February 1937, one woman show, eleven watercolors; Venice-Myakka Hotel, exhibits, sponsored by Venice Junior Woman’s Club, March 1937; Florida Federation of Art Circuit, 1938; Florida Federation of Art 12th Annual, Society of Four Arts, Palm Beach, December 1938, watercolor, Going Fishing; Sarasota Art Association, Ringling Museum of Art, February 1939; Bradenton Woman’s Club Exhibit, March 1939; Orange Blossom Hotel, Sarasota and Venice-Myakka Hotel, February 1941, 17 paintings, Scenes of the South, including Oyster Boats, Sea Island, Fisheries, Tide Waters, Trees Three, The Family, Main Street, Chinese Junk, Going Home, Dark Trunks, Fruitage, Across the Yard, Calm, Sunday, Slave Quarters and Key West; Sarasota Art Association, 1942, one woman show; Clearwater Art Museum, 1942; Sarasota Art Association, Airport Gallery, March 1948, watercolor landscapes of Guatemala and Mexico; St. Augustine Art Association, January 1950.
