Paul Minnis (NC, b. 1933), Historic City Market, Raleigh, North Carolina

Acrylic on canvas, 1984, signed and dated at lower left, framed.

Stretcher size 32 1/2 x 60 in.; Frame dimensions 33 1/2 x 61 in.

Private Collection, Raleigh, North Carolina

A former art instructor at UNC-Wilmington alongside Claude Howell, Paul Minnis's work is present in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, and the Mint Museum, Charlotte. Beginning as a successful ceramicist, Minnis later devoted himself to painting in the early 1980s and continued receiving accolades and commissions.

City Market in Raleigh, North Carolina, is a historic public marketplace that opened on October 1, 1914, as part of the Moore Square commercial district. Designed in a Spanish Mission style by architect James Matthew Kennedy, it served for more than four decades as a central farmers market where growers from across eastern North Carolina brought produce, poultry, seafood, and other goods to sell, and where residents socialized under and around Moore Square’s cobblestone streets. With the rise of supermarkets and the opening of a new state farmers market in the 1950s, City Market declined and closed in 1957, later operating as a furniture store. In the 1980s, when this was painted, the city secured funding to recognize and rehabilitate the Market and surrounding buildings, saving it for future generations.

Good estate condition.