John Clymer

born Ellensburg, Washington, 1907; died Jackson, Wyoming, 1989

BiographyJohn Clymer was born in Ellensburg, Washington, and moved to Canada after graduating from high school to work as an illustrator while taking night classes at the Vancouver School of Art. After a year he moved to Westport, Connecticut, known as an artists colony, to study under N.C. Wyeth and Harvey Dunn. Soon Clymer’s western illustrations were appearing in national magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, and he illustrated more than 70 covers for the Saturday Evening Post during his long career. By 1964 Clymer had decided to devote himself to painting full time and embarked on a mission to create images of the American West that were as detailed and accurate as possible. With his wife, Doris, an amateur historian, Clymer developed a process that involved in-depth historical research and traveling to the site of the proposed image to create highly detailed compositions. The artist depicted diverse themes—fur trade, frontier cowboys, and wildlife of North America—but he had a special interest in depicting the Native peoples and scenery of the Pacific Northwest. He was elected to the Cowboy Artists of America in 1964 and moved to Teton Village, Wyoming, in 1970.

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