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One list (date unknown) of works by Kearfott owned by both private families and public institutions in Martinsville cited 46 portraits and 16 landscapes. The landscapes, in both oil and watercolor, include scenes from the Valley of Virginia, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Smokies. A flyer from a 1946 exhibit reads: “A Virginian by birth and ancestry, Robert Kearfott’s art has carried him far from his native Martinsville. New York, San Francisco, Paris, and finally New York again, where he now makes his home, have known him in turn.” A 1969 newspaper clipping from the Martinsville Bulletin read: “after he reached adulthood, Robert Ryland Kearfott did not spend as much of his 79 years in Martinsville as friends would have liked. But he did come back often enough to visit friends and relatives to remind himself of his native ties to an area whose people watched and were proud of his career as an artist. So it was that his body was brought back here over the weekend for burial in Oakwood Cemetery.” He died October 2, 1969, and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Martinsville, Virginia. |
 
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