Earl Cunningham Painted in a St. Augustine Curio Shop and Rarely Sold a Picture

Earl Cunningham opened the Over-Fork Gallery in St. Augustine in 1949. It was a curio shop, his paintings hung on the walls, and when customers asked to buy one he usually said no. One of the few people he did sell to, in 1969, was a collector named Marilyn Mennello.

The Painter

He was born in Edgecomb, Maine, in 1893 and taught himself to paint. Before St. Augustine he had worked as a seaman, a tinker and a chicken farmer. His pictures show a Florida coast that never quite existed: sailing ships, flocks of birds, palms and rivers under skies no photograph would match.

The Museum

Cunningham died in 1977. The Cunningham collection that Marilyn and Michael Mennello gave to Orlando became the core of the Mennello Museum of American Art, which opened in November 1998. In 2007 the Smithsonian American Art Museum sent his work on a national tour, Earl Cunningham’s America.