Sommer Brothers, Stoves and Hardware
Clarence Holbrook Carter
American Art
Clarence Carter’s “portrait” of the Sommer Brothers Hardware Store in Portsmouth, Ohio, is a quaint example of the rise of American Scene painting in the 1920s. Artists associated with this trend focused on images of rural or small-town locales and often described them in a deliberately simplified form of realism related to American folk art, then rising in popularity. Carter here commemorated a thriving commercial block—well-known throughout southern Ohio—that would be damaged beyond salvage in the 1937 Ohio River flood.
MEDIUM
Watercolor over graphite on off-white, thick, smooth-textured wove paper
DATES
1928
DIMENSIONS
15 1/8 x 20 1/8 in. (38.4 x 51.1 cm)
Frame: 23 15/16 x 29 15/16 x 1 1/2 in. (60.8 x 76 x 3.8 cm) (show scale)
SIGNATURE
Signed and dated upper right: "Clarence H. Carter. 28"
INSCRIPTIONS
Graphite inscription, top right corner, verso: "125"
COLLECTIONS
American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
29.65
CREDIT LINE
Carll H. de Silver Fund
EXHIBITIONS
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Clarence Holbrook Carter (American, 1904–2000). Sommer Brothers, Stoves and Hardware, 1928. Watercolor over graphite on off-white, thick, smooth-textured wove paper, 15 1/8 x 20 1/8 in. (38.4 x 51.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Carll H. de Silver Fund, 29.65. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 29.65_SL1.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 29.65_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT
© Estate of Clarence Holbrook Carter
The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here.
The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act.
For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch.
For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright.
If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.
RECORD COMPLETENESS
Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.
