John Clymer

John Ford Clymer was born on January 29, 1907, in Ellensburg, Washington. He trained at the Vancouver School of Art and the Ontario College of Art after high school, later studied at the Wilmington Society of Fine Arts in Delaware, and studied at the Grand Central School of Art in New York under the illustrator Harvey Dunn. Specific attendance years and a formal art degree are not documented in sources reviewed.

Clymer built his early career as a commercial illustrator, painting covers for The Saturday Evening Post from the 1940s to the 1960s; the exact number of covers is not documented in sources reviewed. From the 1960s onward he shifted increasingly toward fine art painting of Western historical subjects, researching frontier travel, the fur trade, and events such as the Lewis and Clark expedition in detail before composing his scenes. He was an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and an exhibiting member of the Cowboy Artists of America and the National Academy of Western Art, where he won numerous awards; specific award titles and years for those organizations are not documented in sources reviewed. In 1982 he was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame.

John Clymer died on November 2, 1989, at age 82. Sources consulted differ on the place of death, citing both Bellevue, Washington, and Teton Village, Wyoming; the exact location and cause of death are not confirmed in sources reviewed.

Clymer's induction into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1982, alongside his standing as an exhibiting member of the Cowboy Artists of America and the National Academy of Western Art, reflects a critical and institutional consensus that placed him among the leading twentieth-century Western illustrators and painters. Museum and specialist market sources consistently frame his work around historical research and documentary accuracy in depicting frontier travel, the fur trade, and events such as the Lewis and Clark expedition, a combination credited with carrying him from commercial illustration into fine art collecting circles.

Clymer's market runs almost entirely through specialist Western art auction houses rather than contemporary galleries, and public sale data is comparatively sparse and unevenly documented across sources. The Coeur d'Alene Art Auction's results page for the artist lists Trader at Pierre's Hole Rendezvous at USD 616,000 and Water, Water, Overland Astorians, 1811 at USD 526,500; the exact sale date for either lot is not available in the sources consulted. Separately, an aggregator (Artnet) and a secondary social-media report describe a possible sale as high as roughly USD 878,000 to 879,100, but without a confirmed title, date, or primary auction record, so that figure is not adopted here as the confirmed record. Other documented sales include Northern Winter (1982), which sold for USD 120,000 at the Jackson Hole Art Auction on September 13, 2025. Reporting on his market has generally described his large historic Western scenes as commanding five figure to six figure prices.

Clymer has no published catalogue raisonne, and verification of his work relies on provenance research, the holdings of the Clymer Museum and Gallery in Ellensburg, Washington, and the specialist auction houses, including Coeur d'Alene, Scottsdale, Jackson Hole, and Heritage, that most frequently handle his paintings. There is no current commercial gallery representation; the closest institutional steward of his legacy is the Clymer Museum and Gallery. Collectors should also be careful about attribution: auction and market databases list a second, unrelated artist also named John Clymer, born 1932, whose recorded prices are far lower, so any catalog entry should be checked against birth and death years, subject matter, and price level to confirm it refers to John Ford Clymer, 1907 to 1989. Public sale records for Clymer are comparatively thin and inconsistently documented, including reports of a possible sale near USD 878,000 to 879,100 that could not be tied to a specific work, date, or primary auction record, so any single reported price should be treated with caution pending fuller catalogue detail.