Clara Irene McDonald, nationally known 20th century painter, was born in Iredell, Bosque County, Texas, on November 20, 1875, daughter of Thomas McDonald [1849-1927] and Mary Lasswell [1854-1930]. Known as an “American Naïve” or “Primitive” artist, her works included scenes of life in the American West, especially her home state of Texas.

Her schooling was sporadic, only attending school when she wasn’t needed at home. In 1880, Clara was living with her parents in Iredell, where her father worked as a carpenter. At the age of twenty, about 1895, Clara began working in the Ellis County Clerk’s office in Waxahachie, gaining experience in drawing from sketching land surveys for court documents. By 1900, Clara McDonald had returned to Bosque County and was living with her parents and four brothers and sisters in the 1900 census.

Clara McDonald married Bosque County teacher and businessman John Pierce Williamson [1865-1943] — a widower with two young children — in Ellis County, on June 24, 1903. In 1910, John and Clara Williamson were living in the town of Iredell. The family included Mr. Williamson’s two children from an earlier marriage (John and Faye)and John and Clara’s five-year-old son, Pierce McDonald [Donald] Williamson, who was born in 1905.

John and Clara Williamson were living in Iredell in January of 1920, where Mr. Williamson was employed as Postmaster. They moved to Dallas between 1920 and 1930 and family history states that they operated a boarding house and dry goods store. The 1930 census for Dallas County listed Clara I. Williamson as a “hemstitcher”. Hemstitching is a decorative sewing technique for embellishing the hem of linens, handkerchiefs, or garments. It is often used in combination with drawn-thread work to create intricate designs. In1940, the census for Dallas County listed John and Clara Williamson with three lodgers in their home.

Clara’s husband discouraged her interest in art, but after his passing in 1943, sixty-eight-year-old Clara began taking art classes at Southern Methodist University and the Dallas Museum School. Although she began painting late in life, “Aunt Clara”, as she was affectionately called in the art community, gained a national reputation over her twenty-year career.

She sold her first work to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and soon began entering art competitions, winning the Dealey Purchase Award at the Dallas Allied Arts Exhibit in 1946. Two years later Clara Williamson was featured at a solo exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art. Over time, her work was exhibited in museums including Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, New York City, Miami, Florida, Oklahoma City, Santa Barbara, California, and Washington, DC.

Clara called her early works “Memory Paintings”, recalling scenes from her early life in rural Bosque County. Her paintings are typical of American “Primitive” style, in simple, stylized form, often illustrating a rural or historical event, such as Chicken for Dinner [1945], The Girls Went Fishing [1946] , The Building of the Railroad [1949-50], Old Chisholm Trail [1952], and The Day the Bosque Froze Over, created in 1953. In 1950, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted: “Metropolitan Museum of Art will open its exhibition “American Painting Today – 1950 …Texans and their works to be exhibited include: … Clara McDonald Williamson, Dallas, “Building the Railroad”.

Clara Williamson moved into a nursing home in Dallas in 1966, where she completed the last of her more than 100 paintings. In 1969, a documentary on Clara Williamson was shown on national television and a book Aunt Clara: The Paintings of Clara McDonald Williamson by Donald and Margaret Vogel, was published by the University of Texas Press in 1966.

Clara Irene McDonald Williamson died at the age of 100 on February 17, 1976, in Dallas, Texas, and was buried at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas. Her paintings can be seen in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas, the Terry Art Institute in Miami, Florida and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.