Alfred Lambourne, 1850-1926
Gathering the Wagons, Chimney Rock, 1900
oil on gouache on board
22 x 28 inches
Alfred Lambourne (1850-1926) was many things. He was a poet, explorer, writer, pioneer, patron, hermit, and painter. Above all, however, he was a deeply rooted romantic. Better known in his own day, he was Utah’s principal resident of the movement, possessing a robust and expansive romantic soul that eagerly sought out the sublime landscapes of the American West and the glories of the past. Remarkably, Chimney Rock (1900) is emblematic of both lofty pursuits.
Lambourne first encountered the rocky pinnacle known as Chimney Rock in 1866 as a member of a Mormon wagon train slowly working its way toward the Utah Territory. The famed spire, located in western Nebraska, was an important landmark for all pioneer routes, but it had particular resonance for Mormon pioneers. Roughly equidistance from Council Bluffs, Iowa to Salt Lake City, Chimney Rock was known as the “half-way post” and “half-way house,” where pioneers, knowing that they were nearing Zion, celebrated with music and dance.[1]
Years later, Lambourne vividly recounted his first experience with the distinctive geological feature,
Distinctly I remember the day on which we first sighted the…pale blue shaft above the plain. We had just formed the last semi-circle of our noon corral and through its western opening was seen the Chimney, wavy through the haze that arose from the heated ground. It was my father who pointed it out to me. It afterwards seemed to us that the slow-going oxen would never reach it; or, rather, that they would never arrive at the point in the road opposite that natural curiosity; for the emigrant trail passed several miles to the northward of the low range of bluffs of which “the Chimney” Rock is apart.[2]
Once they reached the sight, Lambourne learned more about the scale and expanse of the western landscape.
One evening several of our company tried to walk from our nearest camp to the terraced hills that formed the Chimney’s base, but the distance proved too great. That was one of our first lessons in the deceptiveness of space – the distance to hills and mountains.[3]
Already a budding artist, Lambourne sketched along the way, making his first renditions of famed natural landmarks he experienced like Scott’s Bluff and Echo Canyon. His sketch of Chimney Rock was created from the banks of Lawrence Creek, a site that was, he noted, “most picturesque.”[4] Ultimately, this initial drawing would act as a visible and symbolic reference for later works.
Lambourne returned to the subject of Chimney Rock throughout his career. In 1874 in an article titled, “Sunrise on the Plains,” a reporter for the Salt Lake Herald-Republican touted Lambourne as “the rising young artist of this city” and praised his latest depiction of Chimney Rock, which, it was noted, was based on his initial “sketch from the spot.” The monument, the article read, which had affected “early emigrants with feelings of awe and admiration, stands erect in all the magnificent grandeur which the artistic brush lends to noble subjects.” The writer concluded that “his skilled brush has portrayed the scene with such a life-like correctness that in gazing upon the canvas one is carried back in his thoughts to the time when what is there represented was a reality.”[5]
Nearly a quarter of a century later, Lambourne was still painting the landmark with many of the same features. As reflected in Chimney Rock (1900), it was a subject that still resonated with Utah viewers. Yet, in the forty-four years since the artist first experienced the feature much had changed. The completion of the Transcontinental railroad in 1869 made travel easier and faster and changed pioneers into passengers. The dream of Zion had transformed into the creation of Utah. In 1897 with the Jubilee of the arrival of Brigham Young and the initial wagon trains, many became nostalgic. Indeed, the desire to gaze back on a heroic past only deepened as the decades went on and the distance from the original pioneer treks only lengthened. “How rapidly we have grown!” Lambourne proclaimed, “What used to be the dreams of the future first changed to reality, and then sank away until they are now but a dream of the past.”[6]
Three years after the jubilee celebrations, Lambourne returned to the subject of Chimney Rock. As “one of those who ‘crossed the plains,’” the artist and his work were given special authority. Afterall, he knew the sights and experiences of the pioneer. A native of Great Britian, Lambourne also possessed a certain English penchant for nostalgia. Thus, this painting was to act as an aide-mémoire. It was to be a reminder of bygone events specifically for those who remembered circling their wagons at the base of Chimney Rock, the welcomed, warm glow of a peaceful evening on the plains, and the celebrations initiated by the knowledge that they were more than halfway to their new home.
This work was not only a nostalgic glimpse into the past, but it was also created for an audience who did not make the westward trek on foot or in a covered wagon. It was created for those who would only know of these events vicariously. The “memorable Westward March,” one contemporary observed, “must now be read; it cannot be experienced.”[7] To help uninitiated eyes, Lambourne added anachronistic details. This is probably best seen in the marked grave placed in the foreground of the painting. Repeatedly Lambourne recounted the sorrows of losing members of his company as well as the pain in encountering shallow, unmarked graves. “Countless in numbers almost were those silent witnesses of death by the way,” the painter remembered, “the mounds were to be seen in all imaginable places. Each day we passed them, singly or in groups.”[8] The inclusion of the grave acts a reminder of the sorrow and death of the pioneer experience. While his peers would understand the meaning of the mound by the stream, others would not. The inclusion of the headboard, while historically inaccurate, was designed for those who had a different idea of what a grave looks like. This, therefore, was also to be a poignant reminder of the challenges and sacrifices made by parents, grandparents (and so on). In 1900 Lambourne understood that the connections to the past were fading. Poignantly, while his 1874 depiction of Chimney Rock was depicted in the hope of a new day, his later view was presented in the warm glow and color of the setting sun.
In this large and impressive painting, Lambourne combined elements that are emblematic of his best work. A man of his present, he was also an artist who reveled in the splendors of the past and his place in it. Moreover, he understood and clearly benefited from his role as a pioneer, not only in crossing the plains, but also in depicting the grand views of the American West. This is the ethos of Lambourne’s romanticism, which is on full display in this late depiction of famed Chimney Rock.
- Dr. James R. Swensen, Professor of Art History and the History of Photography, Brigham Young University.
[1] Alfred Lambourne, The Old Journey:Reminiscences of Pioneer Days (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon and Sons, 1892),49.
[2] Alfred Lambourne, The Pioneer Trail (Salt Lake City: The Deseret News, 1913), 38-39.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Lambourne, The Pioneer Trail, 39.
[5] “Sunrise on the Plains,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican (March 27, 1874): 3
[6] Alfred Lambourne, The Old Journey, 24.
[7] Bryon Groo, “Introduction,” in Alfred Lambourne, The Old Journey: Reminiscences of Pioneer Days (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon and Sons, 1892), 2, 13.
.[8] Lambourne, The Pioneer Trail, 35.
John Hafen, 1856-1910
Spring in Timpanogos Valley, 1907
Oil on canvas
20 x 30.25 inches
In I890, Swiss-born Mormon convert John Hafen helped convince LDS church authorities to sponsor the "French Art Mission," an opportunity to study at the Academie Julian in Paris. Hafen, along with several other young Utah artists, trained in France to improve his skills and create murals and paintings in the LOS temples upon his return to Utah. Hafen's studies in Paris had a vital impact on his work; like many other young artists of the time, he switched his interest from academic studio work to landscape painting from nature.
Explaining his new view, Hafen wrote,
"Cease to look for mechanical effect or minute finish, for individual leaves, blades of grass, or aped imitation of things, but look for smell, for soul, for feeling, for the beautiful in line and color."
Dr.Vern Swanson writes:
This is one of Hafen's most significant masterpieces. In the foreground is a field of white, blue and red wildflowers, row of trees, through the opening of trees, a shed, Mount Timpanogos in the distance. Then as spring was coming-on our artist painted the first flowers. . . .This manifested itself in one of the most exquisite flower paintings of Hafen's career, Spring in Timpanogos Valley, where we see a profusion of different blooms growing together. The impact of this later season floral piece, is aided by its large size, succulent color, and the flourish of the artist's brushwork.
John Hafen, 1856-1910
Portrait of Frances Terrell at Ten- Playtime, June1910
Oil on canvas
44.50 x 33.50 inches
Hafen lived in extreme poverty until he moved to Indiana late in his life. There, he was accepted into a group of regional impressionist artists and at last began to achieve success. Sadly, just as he began to realize his life-long dream of providing for his family through sales of his art, Hafen contracted pneumonia and died in 1910. Among the doctors who treated Hafen was Dr. John F. Barnhill, who hired the artist to paint a portrait of his niece, Frances Terrell.
From his forthcoming book on John Hafen, Dr. Vern Swanson writes:
“Toward Thanksgiving of 1909 while working in Brown County and in Indianapolis, Hafen began to suffer from a persistent cough and hearing problems. Somehow he found a doctor, John F. Barnhill (1865-1945), a nationally known ear-nose-throat specialist. The story as told by the sitter, Frances Terrell (b. Feb. 1899), begins: ‘One day in 1912 [actually Nov 1909] - a man walked into Uncle John’s office with some kind of bronchial infection and before he allowed Uncle John to make a diagnosis he explained that he was very poor and had no money to pay for the necessary treatments. He was an artist - his home was in Utah and he was a member of the Mormon faith... He told Uncle John that he would be very glad to exchange paintings for medical service…’
The Barnhills did not have children and often lavished themselves on their nieces and nephews. Hafen thought that a portrait would be appropriate. So Aunt Celeste (Barnhill) phoned the sitter’s mother and said: Mr. Hafen wants to paint Frances’ portrait -she reminds him so much of the little German [sic, French] girls he knew in Munich [sic, Paris]. Of course mother said, “Why, we can’t afford to have a portrait painted” but Aunt Celeste insisted, saying Uncle John had been very nice to Mr. Hafen and that he should do the portrait... And shortly after the first of the year Mr. Hafen started coming out to our house in Irvington every Saturday morning to work on my portrait… I looked forward to getting dressed up in my dancing school dress, putting on the pink hair ribbon, and wearing the branch coral beads that Aunt Celeste had brought me from Rome on one of their many trips to Europe...’” Before putting the finishing touches on the portrait, Hafen passed away.
“Hafen wrote about the portrait in a March 5 letter to Thora: ‘The little girl out at Irvington that I am painting was like a caged wild bird today for sitting, but I got through with it. It remains for me to do a little more with the background then it will be entirely finished.’
The portrait is the most charming of the artist’s extant portraiture and stands complete in its own right. It demonstrates that right to the end of his truncated life, John Hafen was working at the height of his considerable powers.”
James T. Harwood, 1860-1940
Mount Timpanogos from Utah Lake, Utah, 1928
Oil on canvas on board
14.50 x 26.75 inches
J.T. Harwood is not generally considered the “father” of Utah art. He was more. A talented and gifted painter, he set a new standard for his peers and later generations of Utah artists. By studying in Paris at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, he was the first artist to give Utah art legitimacy. In winning a medal at the prestigious French Salon, he was the first painter from the state to truly transcend it. He was not the father of Utah art; he was its first star; he was its core.
Despite his success abroad, Utah and its beauty were central to his work. The academies of Paris taught him skills and sophistication, but it was his home state that provided his best subject matter. He loved hiking and climbing along the Wasatch Range and was attracted to its rugged landscapes and peaks like Mt. Olympus. He was, as his friend and patron Alice Merrill Horne posited, “Utah’s strenuous painter.”[1] Yet, it was the region around Lehi, the place of his birth, that he loved most. He knew the small histories of the area and proclaimed that “every mile of the way had great interest to me.”[2] Speaking of Harwood’s deeply rooted connections to this place, Horne stated:
Lehi is well suited to the life of an observing child. The lake, the mountain, and the field are stored with riches…The distant mountains and the low hills, the lake, the mountain streams, the orchard, and the grain patches, the truck garden, and the meadows – were all sources of inspiration. So among Lehi haunts, James T. Harwood found inspiration for a multitude of pictures.[3]
Mt. Timpanogos from Utah Lake is one of these pictures. In his lifetime, it was his lake paintings, captured in “various effects and with different mediums,” that were seen as particularly charming.[4] This is true of this remarkable example, with its representation of the jagged western coastline of Utah Lake arcing toward a distant Mt. Timpanogos. Few, abroad, would associate arid Utah with such a scene of sublime and subtle beauty. For one in tune with this place, however, beauty, as demonstrated in this painting, was abundantly found in Utah’s lakes, mountains, and “every mile of the way.”
Dr. James R. Swensen, Professor of Art History and the History of Photography, Brigham Young University.
[1] Alice Merrill Horne, Devotees and their Shrines: A Handbook of Utah Art (Salt Lake City, UT: The Deseret News, 1914), 51.
[2] J.T. Harwood, A Basket of Chips: An Autobiography by James Taylor Harwood (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), 136.
[3] Horne, 51.
[4] Ibid., 54.
LeConte Stewart, 1891-1990
CARDSTON CANADA, OCT 6 A.M. 1920
Oil on paperboard
6.75 X 8.5 Inches
On the bottom edge of this painting LeConte Stewart recorded that it was created on October 6 sometime in the “A.M.” By this date, in Alberta, Canada, the sun does not rise until around 7:30, which might not have given the observant painter much time to locate and record this nondescript, yet remarkable set of trees before noon.
Autumn Morning was made during an important period in the artist’s career. Stewart was in Alberta on assignment; his primary task was to paint the murals in the Cardston Temple for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With the help of this commission, his career was on its ascendency. He would soon begin teaching, first at Ogden High School and later at the University of Utah, where he would influence a generation of Utah artists. During this time, he would also hone his craft and become one of the leading landscape painters in the American tradition.
This painting is also an early example of the primary characteristics of Stewart’s best work. Throughout his career, he tried to avoid the sentimental; he wanted, as Wallace Stegner observed, to avoid all “prettification.”[1] Furthermore, he disliked verdant scenes and generally selected nondescript subjects for his paintings. He chose to paint outdoors from “late fall to early spring” during seasons most fair-weather painters tried to avoid.[2] Mud, winter’s chill, and snowy roads were not deterrents for Stewart.
On this Wednesday, probably before working on the temple murals in the afternoon, Stewart captured a scene in which the brilliant colors of fall were already muted, and the browning leaves were nearly ready to fall. This aligns with the artist’s aesthetic. “I would rather paint the cool violet and the somber gray ashes of late autumn and winter than the brilliant red and orange fires of fall,” he asserted.[3] Elsewhere Stewart explained, “I am trying to cut a slice of contemporary life as it is in the highways and byways, as I have found it…I cannot ignore the call of life in the raw.”[4] Thus, what really made art great, he argued, was its ability to capture “a time of day, or a season of year, as well as a place.”[5] This is exactly what Stewart did on a chilly October morning in Canada.
-Dr. James R. Swensen, Professor of Art History and the History of Photography, Brigham Young University.
[1] Wallace Stegner, “The Power of Homely Detail,” American Heritage 36, no. 5 (August/September 1985): 64.
[2] Gregory C. Thompson, “Sketches from Life: LeConte Stewart,” American Artist 49 (November 1985): 114.
[3] Stewart, quoted in Stegner, 69.
[4] Stewart, quoted in Robert S. Olpin, Dictionary of Utah Art (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Art Center, 1980), 241.
[5] LeConte Stewart, Untitled document, LeConte Stewart Papers, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
J. Henri Moser, 1876-1951
untitled
Oil on canvas
24.50 x 30 inches
Swiss-born Henri Moser emigrated to Utah as a boy, and studied with well-known Utah artist and educator A.B. Wright from 1906 to 1908. Moser trained in Paris starting in 1908, and was deeply influenced by Expressionist and Fauvist movements. After returning to Utah in 1911, he became a catalyst for modernist painting in the state.
Louise Richards Farnsworth
November
Oil on canvas
20 x 22 inches
Louise Richards Farnsworth was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1878. From 1898 to 1900, she studied in New York at the Art Students League, and later studied in Paris where her work was exhibited in the Salon in 1904. She created Utah landscapes in a passionate, bright expressionistic style she had gleaned from her training outside Utah. As Edward Allen Jewell of the New York Times stated, “Farnsworth has very definitely a point of view of her own. Here is no facile naturalism, sugared with suspicious allurements of the studio.“
Maynard Dixon, 1875-1946
Pueblo Mountains, 1927
Oil on board
10 x 14 inches
For those who knew Maynard Dixon and his work there were often three things that constituted the “basic elements” of his pictures: form, color, and country. According to Arthur Millier, Dixon’s “vision of the West is so true that we have come to see the region through the forms and colors of his paintings.” “He recreates the West,” Millier continued, “in terms of its own rhythms, its own forms, its own color, its own light.”[1] The painter LeConte Stewart also recognized these connections. Writing about his friend’s work, Stewart acknowledged Dixon’s superb draughtsmanship, but saw something more. “[I]f you can travel through the high desert country and not have memories of Dixon’s color and design come flooding in every turn, then either you don’t know his paintings, or your eyes have never trained to see the West.”[2]
Today, Dixon is primarily known for form: his depictions of the hard-edge patterns, rhythms, and shapes of the American West. He is seen more as a formalist than colorist. Indeed, one of the artist’s most important and enduring talents was his ability to depict the “bare-breasted and stark” landscapes of the region.[3] Yet, it is important to remember, as Millier and Stewart noted, that in Dixon’s best work form and color were essential in his representation of the western landscape. On closer inspection it is possible to see his bold use of color in pointillist azure skies, corral red and orange sandstone cliffs, purple and indigo shadows, and the golden yellow brilliance of autumnal cottonwoods.
Painted in 1929 in oppressive July heat somewhere in a “very little known country” between the Pueblo Mountains of southern Oregon and Alder Creek Ranch in northern Nevada, this work is emblematic of Dixon’s love of color – pure color.[4] In a majority of his paintings, it is clear that the Dixon loved the matted surface of woven canvas, which so beautifully replicates the granular quality of a desert landscape. Yet, in this remarkable painting it is possible to see the artist’s adroit handling of paint, employing and mixing a wide range of colors, from mauve foothills to a tangerine streak cutting across the middle ground, to represent the subtle beauty of this otherwise pedestrian Great Basin valley. Roughly ten years earlier, Dixon provided a remarkable parallel to this oil-sketch in his poem titled (appropriately) “Color:”
At evening as I walk the peaceful slopes,
With joy indrawing the swift-passing hues,
Tinting so tenderly the sunset hills
Veiled in the valley, deep in blue ravines,
I know that here at last I see revealed
The wonder-changing colors of the Soul.[5]
Few other works by the artist are as colorful, as painterly, or as bold. Indeed, this painting can be said to highlight the skills and eye of Maynard Dixon, Expressionist.
- Dr. James R. Swensen, Professor of Art History and the History of Photography, Brigham Young University.
[1] Arthur Millier, “Introduction,” in Maynard Dixon: Painter of the West (Tucson: Unknown, 1945), n.p.
[2] LeConte Stewart, “Maynard Dixon, Artist,” September 1945, LeConte Stewart Papers, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[3] Maynard Dixon, “I am,” in Rim-Rock and Sage: The Collected Poems of Maynard Dixon (San Francisco: The California Historical Society, 1977), 123).
[4] Federal Writer’s Program (WPA), Nevada: A Guide to the Silver State (Portland, OR: Binfords & Mort), 212. See also Donald J. Hagerty, “Out There, Somewhere; Maynard Dixon and Nevada,” in Sagebrush and Solitude: Maynard Dixon in Nevada (New York: Rizzoli Electra and the Nevada Museum of Art, 2024), 238-241.
[5] Maynard Dixon, “Color” [1918] in Rim-Rock and Sage: The Collected Poems of Maynard Dixon (San Francisco: The California Historical Society, 1977), 81.
Maynard Dixon, 1875-1946
Snake Kiva-Oraibi, 1902
pastel on paper
11 x 8 inches
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 retun 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.
Maynard Dixon, 1875-1946
Abandoned Ranch (Lonesome Ranch), Los Banos, California, July 1935
oil on canvas affixed to board
22.75 x 26 inches
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.
Maynard Dixon, 1875-1946
Bear and Bull Fight, 1926
Gouache on Paper
15 x 10 inches
Commission for the University of California (CAL) Yearbook
Signed and dated lower left
Maynard Dixon, 1875-1946
Wolf Dancer, 1926
Gouache on Paper
15 x 10 inches
Commission for the University of California (CAL) Yearbook
Signed and dated lower left
Maynard Dixon, 1875-1946
Home in the Desert (Lone Pine), 1929
Oil on canvas
16 x 19.50 inches
In the summer of 1929, Dixon, his wife photographer Dorothea Lange, and their two sons Daniel and John, journeyed to California's Owens Valley, There, they stayed with the Skinner Family at Lone Pine. Maynard sketched and painted in the Alabama Hills near Lonee Pine, expored the Panamint Mountains, and visited Shoshone and Paiute Indian camps. Dixon considered the encroaching commercial activity of the area destructive of the social structure of small towns, and felt an impending sense of doom. Perhaps it was this unease that led him to paint "Home in the Desert (Lone Desert)", since it conveys a protective, old growth pine offering shelter and calm to a ranch house.
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.
Maynard Dixon, 1875-1946
Sage and Cottonwoods, September 1932
16 x 20 inches
oil on board
Signed Carson, Nev., M.D. September 1932
and signed and titled (on the reverse) "Sage and Cottonwoods"
Dixon inventory number "449" with sticker - Maynard Dixon / 728 Montgomery St. / San Francisco
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. - David Dee, President, David Dee Fine Arts
Populus fremontii, or the cottonwood tree, is the visual poetry of the American Southwest. Young specimens, verdant and whole, exhibit an enthusiasm and hope that is often balanced by a hard-won wisdom gained on the banks of the dry, wide arroyos of the West. Nothing is more beautiful than the cottonwood in autumn and the change to boldly yellow leaves, or what Maynard Dixon called “October Gold,” which glisten in the sun and rustle in the wind. Old cottonwoods, gnarled and broken, fight to sustain life even as their massive limbs wither and decay. Once dead, they stretch like ossified coral into a deep, sea-blue sky.
Nothing reveals life in the Southwest better than a cottonwood and no one appreciated or understood their poetry better than Maynard Dixon. While they bear the name of explorer John C. Frémont, Dixon made them his own especially in the autumn of his life when he drew and painted them wherever he encountered them. According to his biographer, Donald Hagerty, Dixon “made the cottonwood a personal symbol in his art…, painting many canvases of a tree which tolerates little between it and the sun and wind.”[1]
In addition to cottonwoods, Dixon also knew sage brush or Artemesia tridentata, “Big Sage brush,” or “Great Basin Sagebrush.” If the cottonwood is the poem of the West, sage brush is its common prose. Cottonwoods punctuate the landscape; sage covers it. Instead of mere groundcover or the ubiquitous “sagebrush zone,” Dixon gave the plant individual form and vitality.[2] He understood the ways in which their silvery plumage holds the changing light of the West and knew the beauty of their tortured limbs. So close was Dixon to the plant that in his poem “At Last,” an auto-eulogy of sorts, he stated that when he was gone one would find him “among the fragrant sage.”[3] Fittingly Dixon’s ashes were placed in a spot surrounded by sagebrush.
What is remarkable about his Sage and Cottonwoods, which he painted in September 1932, is how it demonstrates his love and knowledge of these two western dwellers. Undoubtedly the local chamber of commerce would have preferred that Dixon tout the growth of Carson City and its comfortable homes. The painter, however, had other plans, focusing on what he valued most. Crowding out everything else, this painting’s protagonists are a screen of young cottonwoods whose green leaves would soon turn into a flash of brilliant yellow and humble sagebrush nobly struggling to hold its ancestorial territory. More than the homes or their inhabitants, these two entities, cottonwoods and sage, were Dixon’s kindred spirits in the American West.
- Dr. James R. Swensen, Professor of Art History and the History of Photography, Brigham Young University.
[1] Donald Hagerty, “Maynard Dixon: Wisdom of the Ground,” Mesas, Mountains & Man: The Western Vision of Maynard Dixon (Tucson: Medicine Man Gallery, 1998).
[2] Federal Writer’s Program (WPA), Nevada: A Guide to the Silver State (Portland, OR: Binfords & Mort), 228.
[3] Maynard Dixon, “At Last” [1935] in Rim-Rock and Sage: The Collected Poems of Maynard Dixon (San Francisco: The California Historical Society, 1977), 125.
William Wendt 1865 - 1946
untitled (canyon landscape)
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 inches
Hiroshi Yoshida (1876 - 1950)
Grand Canyon, 1925
10 1/4 x 15 5/8 inches
woodblock print
A romantic realist, Yoshida’s style resembles that of an English 19th Century watercolorist applied to Japanese themes. Yoshida is noted for subtle colors and naturalistic atmosphere. This stunning print captures the stark contrasts of light and shadow, red rock and white snow of the Grand Canyon in winter solitude.
Hiroshi Yoshida is known as a Western-style painter and printmaker. Born in Kurume, Japane, he lived and worked in Tokyo. He first painted landscapes in oil, but earned early fame as a watercolorist. He developed an interest in printmaking in 1920 and self-printed all of his work excepting his first seven prints. His early printwork depicted views of Swiss and American landscapes.
Fond of traveling, Yoshida was also an avid alpinst, with mountains and water figuring prominently in his works. A significant contributor to and organizer of important exhibitions at the Toledo Museum of Art, Yoshida’s work was well represented, with 113 prints in a 1930 Japanese print exhibition, and 66 prints in a 1936 show. A romantic realist, Yoshida’s style resembles that of an English 19th Century watercolorist applied to Japanese themes. Hiroshi Yoshia is noted for subtle colors and naturalistic atmosphere. His works won numberous prizes in Japan and in the world, gaining strong Western influences during his travels. He later established the Japan Alpine Artist Association.
Source: Castle Fine Arts, www.castlefinearts.com
Don Olsen (1910-1983)
Enigma Variation, 1976
acrylic on canvas
72h x 60w inches
Helen "Lee" Deffebach (1928 - 2005)
untitled, 1982
acrylic on canvas
60h x 57w inches
Don Olsen (1910 - 1983)
unititled (Ink & Collage series)
ink and collage
20.25 x 27.25 inches
V. Douglas Snow (1927 - 2009)
Cloud Webs, 3/31/1995
Oil on canvas
48 x 84 inches
V. Douglas Snow (1927 - 2009)
Respuesta, 1989
Oil on canvas
36 x 40 inches
V. Douglas Snow (1927 - 2009)
Venetian Wall, 1986
Oil on canvas
40 x 60 inches
