Carl Rice Embrey (Hamilton, Texas, 1938-2022), "West at Will's", acrylic resin on panel, signed lower right, artist's handwritten label on the verso includes title, materials, size, signature, and "The hill west of Poston's - Hamilton county"; also includes gallery label from David Findlay Jr. Fine Art (New York, New York), dating the work to 2007; in artist-made frame

sight: 10.5 x 9 in., frame: 12.25 x 10.75 in.

Provenance: From the collection of a former student and family friend of Carl Rice Embrey's; purchased in 2010 from David Findlay Jr. Fine Art; this lot includes original bill of sale

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 eventually returned to live after many decades in San Antonio.