Carl Rice Embrey (Hamilton, Texas, 1938-2022), "And the Diggers are Buried", oil on canvas, 1968, in original artist-made frame, inscribed to verso

sight: 33 x 26 in., frame: 34 x 27 in.

Provenance: Property from a home in San Antonio, Texas

Carl Rice Embrey was born in 1938 in Hamilton, Texas. After receiving his MFA from the University of Texas in the mid-1960s, Embrey took on a teaching job at the San Antonio Art Institute, where he remained on the faculty until the school's closure in 1993. In 1997, the McNay Art Museum organized a one-man retrospective of Embrey artworks, one of a series recognizing five of the most respected artists in Texas. At the start of his career, Embrey was mostly a non-representational painter, heavily influenced by the Abstract Expressionist movement. From there, he gradually incorporated representation into his work until arriving at the meticulously realist landscapes and interiors he is now known for. He typically spends an extraordinary 800 to 2,000 hours on a painting. Embrey is greatly inspired by his ancestral home in Hamilton, where his family has lived for over a century, and where he has now returned to live after many decades in San Antonio.