Watercolor

Realist painting of a small town grocery store titled "L. J. Dailey, San Marcos, TX" by Ralph D. McLellan, circa 1925.

Ralph McLellan was born on the McLellan Ranch, San Marcos, Texas, on August 27, 1884. He studied art at San Marcos with Miss Maggie Buchanan and a Miss Williams and was awarded many prizes at San Antonio Fairs. He then studied seven years under Philip Hale, Frank Benson, and Edmund Tarbell at the Boston Museum of fine Arts. He studied illustration under Louis Mora and Thomas Fogarty at the Art Students League in New York, design with Henry Clark of Boston and pottery at the University of Chicago. McLellan has had extensive teaching experience: nine years at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, five years as Vocational Art Training instructor in the Boston High Schools, and visiting instructor at the University of Chicago for three summers and has also had many private pupils. In the later part of his career, he taught life drawing and painting at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia. He has exhibited widely including at the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. During World War I, he served in France for twelve months and made drawings for the Bureau of Files with the Overseas Y.M.C.A. Department in New York. As an illustrator, he illustrated "When Christmas Came Too Early," by Mable Blodgett. McLellan passed away in 1977 in Canaan, Connecticut.

H 9.75 in. x W 13.75 in.