Image 1

Alfred Montgomery

Image 2

Alfred Montgomery

Corn with Pumpkin, Sack, Box, Barrel and Scoop, undated

oil on canvas

Gift of Merle and Barbara Glick 1994.5

Image 3

Alfred Montgomery

untitled (basket, corn), undated

oil on canvas

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin P. Horner, Waco, Texas, in memory of his parents Mr. and Mrs. H.N. Horner, Davis, Oklahoma 1996.35.4

Image 4

Alfred Montgomery

detail: untitled (basket, corn), undated

oil on canvas

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin P. Horner, Waco, Texas, in memory of his parents Mr. and Mrs. H.N. Horner, Davis, Oklahoma 1996.35.4

Image 5

Alfred Montgomery

untitled (barrel, pumpkin, corn), 1910

oil on canvas

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin P. Horner, Waco, Texas, in memory of his parents Mr. and Mrs. H.N. Horner, Davis, Oklahoma 1996.35.3

Alfred Montgomery was born in 1857 near Lincoln in Logan County, Illinois (Image 1). He grew up in a farming family, and had several occupations before he began supporting himself as an artist – working as a farmhand, teaching, and preaching as a Presbyterian minister. He moved to Bloomington, Illinois in 1893, and lived there until 1905. While Montgomery had no formal training in art, he was able to make his living by painting rural subjects and selling his art to prosperous patrons in central and northern Illinois.

Montgomery became known as the “Farmer Painter” and the “Corn Artist” because of his rural subject matter. Yellow corn was the central object in many of his paintings – from a single ear to complex pictures of baskets, sacks or boxes of ear corn surrounded by other farm produce (Image 2). His patrons loved the realistic texture produced by the heavy daubs of yellow paint for each kernel, so that it both looked and felt like real corn (Image 3 and 4). Montgomery also frequently painted livestock, especially sheep.

Producing hundreds of paintings of corn and farm animals, Montgomery took to the road to sell his art. He even traveled to Washington D.C. in 1900 to present one of his corn paintings to President McKinley. To better promote his art, Montgomery wrote glowing accounts advocating his own talent and philosophy of art for the common people, and printed them with complimentary testimonial from well-known people of the day.

Montgomery left Bloomington in 1905, and eventually settled in Los Angeles, California. He continued to travel and promote his art in Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. His paintings of rural subjects, particularly corn, are still considered family heirlooms by many owners, and are passed down through the generations from the merchants, bankers, or farmers who knew the artist. Because corn and livestock continue to be an important part of Central Illinois culture, Montgomery’s realistic renderings of these everyday subjects still have great appeal (Image 5).

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