Earl Cunningham

Who was Earl Cunningham?

Earl Cunningham was a twentieth-century American Folk artist. Cunnigham was a self-taught artist who painted mostly landscapes of the coasts of Maine, New York, Nova Scotia, Michigan, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. He used vivid colors, flat perspective, and a few recurrent themes. He added incongruous details, "such as flamingos in Maine and Viking ships in Florida," to his work.

Cunningham was born in Edgecomb, Maine, the third of six children. He left home at age 13 and made a living as a tinker and peddler. About four years later, he began to paint and sell pictures of boats and landscapes. He obtained a license to work as a river and coastal pilot, and worked on sailing ships along the eastern seaboard of the United States. He married Iva Moses, a piano teacher on June 29, 1915. He continued to paint and he and his wife split the next eighteen years between Florida and Maine, where they had a farm. They divorced between 1936 and 1940. In 1940 he sold the farm in Maine and bought a farm in Waterboro, South Carolina. During the Second World War, he raised chickens for the United States Army.

Cunningham moved to Saint Augustine, Florida in 1949 and opened an art gallery and curio shop. In 1961 he sent a painting titled "The Everglades" to Jacqueline Kennedy that is on display at John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. In 1969, his work began to attract serious notice, and in 1970 was exhibited at the then Loch Haven Art Center in Orlando. He reputation continued to grow, and a large number of his paintings were shown at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, Florida in August 1974.