Summer Aspens, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 36, signed lower left: R Wagner ©, Wagner, an Ohio native, trained at the Dayton Art Institute. He earned his MFA from the University of Colorado, and began working as an illustrator for Ford Times in 1958. Wagner was primarily a painter, working in both oil and acrylic, and he exhibited nationally throughout the 1950s and 1960s. His naturalistic landscapes are characterized by unique compositional arrangements that combine foregrounded detailed images of flora with atmospheric perspective. Summer Aspens is a view framed by the trees, themselves, from the vantage point of the viewer’s presence in the scene. Wagner later taught at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and a number of his works remain in the collection.