Florence McClung

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Florence McClung (July 12, 1894 – 1992) was an American painter, printmaker, and art teacher. She was born Florence Elliott White in St. Louis, Missouri, and moved to Dallas, Texas, with her family in 1899, where she lived for the rest of her life. She became part of the Dallas Nine, a group of Texas artists.

Her mother Minerva White made tapestries, which may have inspired Florence to pursue art. In Dallas she finished Bryan High School and studied art with several painters, including Frank Reaugh, Frank Klepper, Olin Travis, Thomas Stell, and Alexandre Hogue. She spent time painting in Taos, New Mexico (1928–1932), where she joined a circle of artists.

By the mid-1930s she was well known as a painter. The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought her painting Lancaster Valley in 1936. She earned degrees in art, English, and education from Southern Methodist University and did graduate work at the Texas Woman’s University and the Colorado School of Fine Arts, where she studied printmaking with Adolf Dehn. She was the Director of Art at Trinity University in Waxahachie, Texas, from 1929 to 1941.

Her art often reflected Texas life and landscapes. She painted rural scenes and places she visited, like Taos, Victor, Colorado, Cypress Swamp, and Torii in Japan. She had several solo shows in the 1930s and exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair and other venues.

McClung worked to promote women artists. She helped form the Texas Printmakers (originally the Printmakers Guild) after women were excluded from the Lone Star Printmakers. In 1945 she became Director of the Texas Fine Arts Association. In 1946 she joined the board of the Southern States Art League and served as the Texas chair for the National Association of Women Painters.

Later in life she focused more on serigraphy. She began losing her sight in the mid-1950s and became blind in her right eye after an operation in 1986. She donated several paintings to the Dallas Museum of Art before she died in 1992.