Golden October, Oct. 1940
Oil on board
16h x 20w inches
SOLD
1940 was the year Maynard Dixon and Edith Hamlin moved into their summer retreat in Mt. Carmel, Utah. Plagued by emphysema, and acutely feeling the knocks of a difficult life, Dixon had entered a phase of reflective, poetic painting. From it emerged some of the most soulful paintings of his career. Just months earlier a reviewer of a recent exhbition had noted, "...this winter the veteran Dixon painted many small pictures. These bring us the tang of desert air, the crisp-edges strong shadows, the delicate but pure tones of sunlifght on red, yellow and gray sand and rock, the long-flowing lines of the horizon, the stillness of the beautiful watelands, touched in with the deftness of a great draftsman-panter....Dixon is so steeped in desert forms and color that these little pictures appear to come from his brush like effortless lyrics. He know his subject so well that it would be impossible for him to lie about it. He is free to paint, if poetically." (Arthur Mill, The Art Thrill of the Week, Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1940.)
Dixon frequently painted cottonwood trees, which he admired as symbols of the hardiness needed to live in the desert, as well as their life-giving qualities. Golden leaves indicate the coming of winter, perhaps echoing Dixon's own sense of mortality. The present painting is a masterpiece of design, as the gulley that water created over time leads the eye into the composition, the center gives us a sense of calm embodied in the lone cow, and the far cliffs of of Diana's Throne in the distance suggest the coming of night, and perhaps, Dixon's (and our own) merging with the desert.
SIGNATURE
signed and dated lower left
On reverse - numbered #639 and inscribed with title Golden October
This work is listed as #639 in Maynard Dixon's master paintings ledger.
Abandoned Ranch (Lonesome Ranch), Los Banos, California, July 1935
oil on canvas affixed to board
22.75h x 26w inches
Price Upon Request
Maynard Dixon's portrayal of the American West reflects his own attitudes and artistic imagination, which served to bring current modern art movements to a new level. Throughout his prolific and varied career, Dixon believed deeply in self-expression and pursued art for its own sake. An individual who personally shunned formal academic training because of its confining structure, Dixon created his own unique vision of the great West and has left a profound and authentic record of the American landscape.
During the mid 1930s, Dixon painted some of his most poignant images that captured post Depression-era California and the maritime strikes of 1934. His graphic and brooding narratives of destitute migrant workers had a strong influence on the artist's landscape painting. "In addition to the strike pictures, Maynard painted the broader issues of a depression-era West, canvases that project human isolation and alienation resulting from an unparalleled social upheaval. In tracing his evolution toward this new art, he explained:
Gradually I broadened out. Starting with a more romantic approach I work slowly toward a more psychological approach. This led, among other things, to a shift of emphasis from an exclusively Western point of view to a broader American outlook. I began to approximate the kind of American art for which Bellows, Sloan and others had fought 30 years ago, and which only recently has become an accepted school...The depression woke me up to the fact that I had a part in all this, as an artist...Painting as I see it, must be human rather than arty. Painting is a means to an end. It is my way of saying what I want you to comprehend. It is my testimony in regard to life, and therefore I cannot lie in paint." (as quoted in D.J. Hagerty, Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, Layton, Utah, 1993, pp. 205-06)
According to scholar, Donald Hagerty, in the summer of 1935 Dixon traveled with fellow artist Ray Strong to the agricultural fields and migrant labor camps around Shafter, California. The two painters continued north exploring the San Joaquin Valley until they reached Coalinga, where Dixon came across the farm depicted in Abandoned Ranch, situated where the valley floor meets the Coast Range of the Coalinga area. "In this sprawling array of hills, grass, and sky, Dixon discovered the rural economy had been shattered by the Depression. Small ranchers, unable to cope, had fled the land, leaving their livelihood and homes behind. Where once these hills had hosted numerous cattle and sheep ranches, not one remained." In Abandoned Ranch, Dixon captures the haunting isolation of a bygone era surrounded by the natural and understated beauty of the rugged American landscape composed in the artist's personally reflective yet modern aesthetic.
SIGNATURE
signed and dated 'Maynard Dixon/July 1935' (lower right)
Our internal notes say that the painting is #532 on Dixon's master list
PROVENANCE
Edith Hamlin, wife of the artist.
Private collection, Oklahoma, circa 1970s.
By descent to the present owner.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Donald J. Hagerty's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's works.
CONDITION
Excellent - Relined - Per Christie's 2008 Auction - The work was lined at the time, so we do not have an image of the original canvas reverse.
Wolf Dancer, 1926
Gouache on Paper
15h x 10w inches
Price Upon Request
Bear and Bull Fight, 1926
Gouache on Paper
15h x 10w in
Price Upon Request
Bright Morning, Utah, October 1944
oil on canvas affixed to board
20h x 24w inches
SOLD
In 1937, Dixon married his third wife and fellow artist, Edith Hamlin. By 1940, due to Dixon's failing health, they moved to Tucson, Arizona, and built a summer home and studio on twenty acres of land just east of Zion National Park in Mount Carmel, Utah. Mount Carmel was Dixon's sacred place of quietude, peace, inspiration, and retreat from the summer heat in Arizona. Here, Dixon would continue to create simple but powerful masterworks through his final years of life.
Bright Morning, Utah depicts a panoramic vista from Dixon's home in Mount Carmel which overlooks a peaceful valley with grazing cattle, golden cottonwoods, and the magnificent Diana's Throne in the distance. The stark blue shadows of the mesa act as a cool backdrop to the warmth of the valley floor. Golden cottonwoods, symbolic of the sun, afterlife, and solitude, were a personal emblem that would be a reoccurring theme in his compositions in the last fifteen years of his life. Bright Morning, Utah is entirely composed of Dixon's iconic trademarks -- broad modernist brushwork, a bold palette, and concentration on shape, line, and form. Dixon explained, "My work, outside the limits of illustration, is not the regulation "Wild West" type painting. I aim rather to interpret the vastness...loneliness, and sense of freedom this country inspires. To me, the wind of the wastelands has color, the opalescent ranges of the desert seem like music, and sometimes the giant clouds of storm, piled far above the mountains, take form as lost and forgotten gods..." Dixon's profound connection to nature and the western landscape during his fifty-year career has undoubtedly left an everlasting impression on the Western Art world.
SIGNATURE
Signed, dated and inscribed lower ldft Maynard Dixon / Utah Oct. 1944
Signed, titled and inscribe on the reverse 706 Bright mornig / Maynard Dixon/ Tucson Ariz.
PROVENANCE
The artist;
Hubert and Mabel Richardson, owners of Cameron Trading Post, Cameron, Arizona;
Sherman and Mary Favour Haseltine, Prescott, Arizona;
Private collection, Scottsdale, Arizona;
Larsen Art Auction, Scottsdale, Arizona, October 24, 2015, lot 71;
Private collection, acquired from the above.
Gathering Storm, 1938
oil on canvas affixed to board
16h x 20w inches
SOLD
SIGNATURE
Signed l.l. “MD Utah Sept 1938 (?)
Rear of panel: Inventory number “485” written in pencil and circled; “Gathering Storm” in artist’s hand; Dixon studio sticker with thunderbird logo
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Pennsylvania
CONDITION
Excellent, recently cleaned with a new hand carved gold frame
Home in the Desert (Lone Pine), 1929
Oil on canvas
16h x 19.50w inches
Price Upon Request
SIGNATURE
Signed with initials, inscribed and dated 'MD / Lone Pine / May 1929' (lower right) numbered and titled '373-B' (on the reverse), with the artist's printed San Francisco address label (on the reverse)
PROVENANCE
L. B. Curtis, Tucson, Arizona
Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery Inc., Tucson, Arizona
Private Collections, Salt Lake City, Utah
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. Burnside, Maynard Dixon: Artist of the West, Provo, Brigham Young University Press, 1974, p. 171
M. Sublette, Maynard Dixon's American West: Along the Distant West, Tucson, Just Me Publishing, LLC, 2018, fig. 236, p. 204, illustrated.
Listed as #378-B on Maynard Dixon's master painting list.
Sage and Cottonwoods, September 1932
oli on board
16h x 20w inches
Price Upon Request
By September of 1932 when this canvas was painted, Dixon had been on the road with his family for four months. It had been a rough year for the Dixon family, with few paintings selling at the height of the Depression and tensions growing between Dixon and his wife, photographer Dorothea Lange. Seemingly the only solace Dixon found was in the persistent sagebrush plants, the sturdy cottonwoods, and the homesteads that had taken shelter under the trees from the blistering sun. Perhaps better than any other painter of the American West, Dixon captured the barren beauty and quiet dignity of the high Western desert.
SIGNATURE
Signed Carson, Nev., M.D. September 1932
Also signed and titled verso "Sage and Cottonwoods"
Dixon inventory number "449" with sticker - Maynard Dixon / 728 Montgomery St. / San Francisco
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Utah
CONDITION
Excellent - new hand-carved 22kt gold leaf frame
Snake Kiva-Orabi, 1902
pastel on paper
11h x 8w inches
Price Upon Request
In 1902 Dixon accepted a commission for illustration work from the Santa Fe Railroad. In addition to being a source of income, it was an opportunity to return to AZ, with which he had become enthralled on his first trip there in 1900. He accompanied photographer Frederick I. Monson in Los Angeles on his assignment to photograph the Hopi on their remote mesas.
It was, and remains, extremely rare for Anglos to be invited to reside with and observe the Hopi. Dixon spent considerable time in Hopi country, including a 1923 trip in which he convalesced for four months, living with Namoki, one of the snake priests, and his blind brother, Loma Himma. Dixon earned the trust of his Native American acquaintances and subjects through the years through showing them respect and displaying a genuine interest in their beliefs, practices, and cultures. Even though he worked an an illustrator of western subjects, he had disdain for romanticized, condescending depictions of all westerners. Here he has created an honest and admiring imaged of the Hopi village adobe architecture and ceremonial structure of the kiva.
SIGNATURE
Front: Snake Kiva-Oraibi, '02
Verso: Kennedy Galleries LTD sticker and label
Edith Hamlin title and date (under Kennedy sticker)
PROVENANCE
Mr. & Mrs. Lawrence A. Fleischman, Detroit
Kennedy Galleries, Inc, NY, NY
Private Collection, Salt Lake City, Utah
