La Loire

1972. Pen and black ink on watermarked Ingres laid paper, 9 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches (234 x 310 mm), signed, dated and titled in brown ink, and initialed and titled in black ink in the lower right corner. Light to moderate age tone and mat tone, and with the signature and notations in brown ink having become quite attenuated, although legible. Presented in a basic black wood frame with a label from the Country Art Gallery, Locust Valley, Long Island. This plein-air work was done in the region where Klots was a student at the esteemed École des Roches, in Brittany. The son of portrait painter Alfred Partridge Klots, and Agnes Boon Klots, Trafford spent his childhood and much of his life near Loire, where his parents established an art colony in the medieval village of Rochefort-en-Terre around 1922.

Klots escaped occupied France and moved back to America where he was active in Maryland and New York for several years, but returned to France after World War II with his wife, Isabel, to restore the property at Rochefort-en-Terre. The couple worked together on this effort until Trafford's death in 1976. The property was eventually purchased by the French goverment and now serves as the seat of the Alfred & Trafford Klots Artist Residency Program.