Montgomery, Alfred

Alfred Montgomery (1858-1922) was born in Logan County, Illinois, and moved to Bloomington in 1893 from Mason City, Iowa. He was known as the Farmer Artist or the Corn Artist and considered by the Lakeview Museum in Peoria as Bloomington’s best-known painter. He achieved renown in artistic circles for his paintings of farm animals and still lifes featuring corn. He settled in Los Angeles in 1906, spent the next decade in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and died in Los Angeles in 1922.

The collection includes newspaper clippings about Montgomery’s exhibitions and sometimes dramatic personal life; information about exhibits and gallery showings; and several scans of his paintings, many held in private hands.