Florence McClung

Florence McClung (July 12, 1894 – 1992) was an American painter, printmaker, and art teacher. She was the daughter of Charles W. and Minerva (McCoy) White and was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She moved to Dallas, Texas, as a child with her family in 1899 and lived there until her death. She later was associated with the Dallas Nine, an influential group of Dallas-based artists.

Early life and education She was born Florence Elliott White in St. Louis. She attended local schools and became deeply immersed in music, studying for a career as a concert pianist. Her mother Minerva made tapestries and may have inspired McClung to study art herself. After moving to Dallas, she graduated from Bryan High School.

Career In the early 1920s in Dallas, McClung studied pastels with Frank Reaugh, and painting with artists like Frank Klepper, Olin Travis, Thomas Stell and Alexandre Hogue.

She painted for periods of time in Taos, New Mexico, between 1928 and 1932, joining a circle that included Hogue, Mabel Dodge Luhan and Tony Luhan and the Taos Society of Artists. The town was a gathering place for artists and writers of many backgrounds, including English writer D.H. Lawrence and his wife. By the mid-1930s, McClung was well-established as a painter; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased her painting Lancaster Valley in 1936. Soon afterward, she completed degrees in art, English and education at Southern Methodist University, and graduate work at Texas State College for Women (now Texas Woman's University) and Colorado School of Fine Arts, where she studied printmaking with Adolf Dehn. Much of McClung's work focused on the "rural farm or developed and unspoiled landscape," like North Wind, which "recorded an event and a place which she knew."

Exhibitions McClung had several solo exhibitions in the 1930s; a New Mexican exhibit was hosted at the Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe. as well as the Texas chairman for the National Association of Women Painters.

Later life and death McClung's later works were mostly serigraphs. As she approached her early sixties in the mid-1950s, she began to lose her sight and decreased her productivity. She may also have created fewer works because it became difficult for her to "reconcile her love for rural countryside with the growing urban character of Dallas".