Clara Van Waning at Lake San Cristobal

One day I was wandering aimlessly around eBay, looking for something, and I found just that. It was a small painting of Lake San Cristobal, lovely little jewel of a lake in the San Juan Mountains of central Colorado.















The eBay seller was presenting it as being by an unknown artist named Ciaya Van Waning. Hmmm, Van Waning, that seems to ring a bell. As I was examining the eBay listing and looking at the pictured signature, I realized that it wasn't Ciaya...it was Clara.
So, this wonderful little painting wasn't by unknown artist Ciaya Van Waning, but instead was painted by virtually unknown artist Clara Van Waning.
Clara Van Waning is unknown in the art community, but readers of literature on the American West will recognize Clara as the artistic sister of Lyle Van Waning in "The Meadow," James Galvin's true life account of life in the lonely wilds of northern Colorado. Clara left the Neversummer Mountains and the ranch life, only to commit suicide.

So I have a wonderful little painting that I paid all of 8 dollars for...which is $2.50 more than Clara's handwritten price on the back. If Clara Van Waning had been famous in the art circles I could refer to some sort of catalogue of her works and maybe even find out when she painted Lake San Cristobal. But there is no record such as that. If there is someone out there with that knowledge hopefully they'll leave a comment to this blog post.