A.P HAYS COLLECTION
April 12, 2025 · 10:00 a.m.
Abe Hays
9/8/1930 – 1/22/2025
First arriving in Arizona as a child by way of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, A.P. Hays immediately fell in love with the American West. By his teen years in the 1940s, he was already collecting Western art and objects. In 1976, after a successful career in public relations, Hays moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he started Arizona West Galleries. The collector and art dealer, known by many as Abe, became a fixture at shows, auctions and events around the West, and quickly developed a reputation for a great eye when it came to Old West artifacts and paintings. When Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West opened its doors in 2015, visitors were greeted by the Abe Hays Family Spirit of the West Collection, the museum’s first permanent exhibition, which consists of 1,400 objects that includes historic Western saddles, rifles and revolvers, badges, gauntlets and horse gear.
Over the course of 60 years collecting art, Hays owned hundreds of Dixon pieces, including masterpieces such as Cloud World. Additionally, he published several books on Dixon and been involved in numerous exhibitions on the artist. He was also known for his encyclopedic knowledge of Western art, from Dixon and Lon Magargee to Frederic Remington and Charlie Russell. He shared this knowledge, and passion, with everyone he encountered. “I’m still a little boy, collecting little-boy things,” Hays told a reporter in 2015. “It’s just been a passion of mine that’s stayed my whole life.” A.P. “Abe” Hays died on January 22, 2025, in Scottsdale, Arizona.
181
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Shadow Side Oil on board
12 x 16 inches
Signed and Utah Oct 44 lower right;
Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Literature: The Art of Maynard Dixon, Donald J. Hagerty, Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, 2010: p. 238
Painted in 1944, a year before Maynard Dixon died in Arizona, Shadow Side represents one of the last paintings made by the artist in Utah. “Whether he worked in the Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona or in the high mesa country of Utah, Dixon continued to paint canvases between 1943 and 1945 with that unique spacing, rhythmic pattern, and strong line and color that were his trademarks, including…Shadow Side.”
Maynard Dixon
1875 - 1946
Few artists have been as consequential to present-day Western art as Maynard Dixon, whose influence has seemingly touched every artist working the last 50 years in a variety of ways. Born in California in 1875, at time when there was still some “wild” in the Wild West, Dixon turned to art almost immediately. Early works were illustrations for magazines and newspapers, including the Sunset Magazine, which ran now-iconic images by the artist on its covers. His assignment required travel around the West, including to Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Arizona. In every location he visited, he sought out Native Americans and other Western subjects who would appear in everything from hand-drawn cartoons to dazzling field studies to his large and magnificent studio paintings.
Dixon was in San Francisco for two major events: the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which destroyed his studio, and the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, which received its distinct orange color—officially called International Orange—from the artist. Dixon loved California and would have easily stayed there, but poor health forced him to find warmer and dryer climates in the deserts of Utah and Arizona. It was his paintings in the desert Southwest that defined Western art while he was alive, and long after. Although modernism had worked its way into Western art before Dixon, it was Dixon who persistently redefined what the genre could be, even today as modern artists continue to cite the painter as an influence on their interpretations of the land and its forms. Dixon died in Tucson, Arizona, in 1946.
Many works in The A.P. Hays Collection have been recently exhibited: Sagebrush and Solitude: Maynard Dixon in Nevada, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV, 2024
The Abe Hays Family Maynard Dixon Collection, Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West, Scottsdale, AZ, 2020-2021
Additionally, over the years, works from the A.P. Hays collection have been featured in more than 18 museums in 11 different states.
182
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Walls of Walpi Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Signed Walpi, Ariz. Sep. 1927 lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $75,000 - 125,000
Literature:
Maynard Dixon: Artist of the West. Burnside, Wesley M., Brigham Young University Press: p. 166
Escape to Reality: The Western World, Gibbs, Linda Jones. of Maynard Dixon. Brigham Young University: Illustrated p. 71
The Art of Maynard Dixon, Donald J. Hagerty, Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, 2010: p. 84
In 1923, Maynard Dixon and his second wife, Dorothea Lange, went to Walpi on the Hopi Reservation in Northern Arizona. After arriving and seeing the distressing conditions of some of the Walpi residents, Lange and their travel companion decided to return to San Francisco, leaving Dixon in the village. He stayed for four months. One of the paintings he brought back with him was Walls of Walpi, which Don Hagerty calls “a haunting, almost ghostly image bathed in the golden light and dust of Hopi country.”
183
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Down the Bank
Graphite
8 x 7 ¾ inches
Initialed and dated 1942 lower right
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
184
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Fort Mohave Indian Reservation, Arizona; Ben Spear Trading Post
Graphite and white chalk
12 ¼ X 9 ¾ inches
Initialed “D” Ft. Mohave, Ariz. July 1900 lower left
Estimate: $2,500 - 3,500
185
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Yaqui Indians
Pen & Ink
7 ½ x 9 ½ inches
Signed Lower right “Golden Gate Park” and dated 94
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
186
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Gallop Indian Figures
Graphite
4 ¼ x 5 ½ inches
“Gallop NM” and dated 02 lower left; Sketch verso
Estimate: $2,000 - 4,000
187
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Man of Ganado
Graphite
6 x 4 ½ inches
Monogram “Ganado” and dated 02 lower left
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
188
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
At the Woodpile Mixed Media
5 ¾ x 4 ½ inches
“Laguna” and dated Nov. 02 lower left
Estimate: $2,500 - 3,500
189
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Desert Rocks No. 2 / Camelback Mountain Oil on canvas mounted to board 16 x 20 inches
Signed April 1925 lower left
Estimate: $60,000 - 90,000
Literature: Maynard Dixon: Artist of the West Burnside, Wesley M., Brigham Young University Press. p. 168 Space Silence Spirit: Maynard Dixon’s West, A.P. Hays, Paradise Valley, AZ, 2002: p. 11
Inspired by a location just five miles from Downtown Scottsdale, Desert Rocks No. 2 / Camelback Mountain captures the famous Phoenix landmark as it was before homes were built to its base. A.P. Hays notes about this painting: “Dixon never painted ‘postcard views,’ as this slice of Camelback Mountain demonstrates.”
190
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Cottage in Carson Oil on board 10 x 14 inches
Initialed Carson New, Aug 1935 lower left; Initialed and titled to my little friend Wonderful, verso
Estimate: $16,000 - 24,000
191
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Colorado Desert, CA
Pen & Ink
5 x 6 inches
Titled and dated 1923 lower left
Estimate: $1,000 - 2,000
192
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Sonoran Steer, Arizona
Graphite
4 x 5 ½ inches
Initialed and dated 1915 lower right
Estimate: $2,000 - 4,000
193
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Saddled Navajo Pony
Graphite
4 ¼ x 5 ½
Monogram Kayenta, Ariz 22 lower left; Authenticated by Edith Hamlin verso
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
194
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Navajo Woman Rider
Graphite
5 ½ x 5 ¼ inches
“Ganado 05” lower left
Estimate: $600 - 900
195
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Arizona Clouds
Graphite
4 ¾ x 5 ½ inches
Initialed and dated 1922 lower left; Sketch verso
Estimate: $1,000 - 2,000
196
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Chinlee Full Moon
Mixed Media
4 ½ x 5 ½ inches
Initialed lower left, Chinlee Oct 02 lower right
Estimate: $2,000 - 4,000
197
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Gorge at Short Creek Oil on canvas mounted to board 12 x 16 inches
Signed, titled and dated 1942 lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Provenance:
Altermann Galleries & Auctioneers, Santa Fe, NM, 2006
Literature:
The Art of Maynard Dixon, Donald J. Hagerty, Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, 2010: p. 229
This painting was created in 1942 during Maynard Dixon and Edith Hamlin’s trip through Northern Arizona’s Mohave County. “Sometimes Dixon and Hamlin would visit the Short Creek area in the Arizona Strip, intrigued by the terrain’s eroded arroyos,” Don Hagerty writes in The Art of Maynard Dixon. “One of the small canvases Dixon painted there was Gorge at Short Creek. From 1941 until his death, he would exhibit these paintings and others [in Tucson and Phoenix].”
198
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Mesa Toward Sunset Oil on board 12 x 15 ¾ inches
Signed “Utah” and dated Oct 1941 lower left
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Literature:
Maynard Dixon: Artist of the West. Burnside, Wesley M., Brigham Young University Press: p. 184
Although Maynard Dixon’s health worsened continuously in the early 1940s, he continued to travel, even making the journey north to spend the summer and fall in his Utah home. This painting, dated October 1941, originated during that period.
199
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Campo Santo study
Gouache
5 x 6 inches
Initialed lower right
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Literature:
Hagerty, D. J., & Dixon, M. (1993). Maynard Dixon: Desert Dreams (First). Gibbs Smith. Campo Santo illustrated pg. XVI
200
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Tonto Apache, Camp Verde, AZ
Pen and brown ink
3 ¾ x 2 ¾ inches
Initialed lower left
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
201
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Flathead Pony Gouache
3 ½ x 4 ¼ inches
Monogram lower left; Authenticated by Edith Hamlin verso
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
202
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Alder Creek Ranch
Oil on canvas mounted to board 9 ½ x 13 ½ inches
Initialed, titled and dated Aug 1927 lower left
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
Literature:
Space Silence Spirit: Maynard Dixon’s West, A.P. Hays, Paradise Valley, AZ, 2002: p. 20
The Art of Maynard Dixon, Donald J. Hagerty, Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, 2010: p. 154
This painting depicts a barn and pen at the Alder Creek Ranch in Humboldt County, Nevada. Dixon was one of the first major painters to paint the state. During a 1927 trip that was supposed to last two weeks—it lasted four months—Dixon and friend Francis Tobin explored Nevada’s arid sagebrush valleys. They stayed at Alder Creek Ranch for nearly a week and used it as a base of operations before heading out to the Black Rock Desert and Winnemucca.
203
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Montana
Oil on canvas mounted to board 10 ⅞ x 13 ⅞ inches
Signed, titled and dated 1909 lower right
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
204
Maynard Dixon 18751946
Pima Indian
Pen & Ink
4 ¼ x 3 inches
Initialed and dated 07 lower left
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
205
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Illustrated letter to Joseph Lobe Pen, Ink and Colored Pencil 11 x 8 ½ inches
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
206
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Montezuma’s Castle near Camp Verde, AZ
Graphite 11 x 8 inches
Initialed “D” and monogram Montezuma’s Castle Aug 1900 lower left; Authenticated by Edith Hamlin
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
207
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Young Man of Guadalajara
Graphite
5 ¾ x 4 inches
Initialed “Guadalajara” and dated Feb 05 lower left
Estimate: $1,200 - 1,800
208
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Tonto Apaches
Graphite
8 x 7 ¼ inches
Initialed and dated 1900
lower right “Camp Verde”, titled lower left
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
209
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Adobe House
Graphite
4 ½ x 6 inches
Monogram, titled and dated 02 lower left
Estimate: $2,500 - 3,500
210
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Navajo Sun-Shelter Oil on board
10 x 13 ¾ inches
Initialed Kayenta, Ariz Aug 1922 lower left; Titled verso
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
Provenance:
Bonhams, Los Angeles, CA, 2008
Painted during an especially active period in 1922 when Maynard Dixon was traveling to both Navajo and Hopi lands, Navajo Sun-Shelter shows the kind of material Dixon was acquiring by meeting his subjects on their own terms, in their own lands.
211
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Virginia City Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Signed, titled and dated July 1933 lower right
Estimate: $25,000 - 40,000
212
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Woman sketch
Graphite
4 ¼ x 3 ¼ inches
Initialed and dated 39 lower left
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
213
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Navajo Seated Woman, with Hair study
Graphite
4 ¼ x 3 ½ inches
Initialed lower left Chinlee Oct 02; Authenticated by Edith Hamlin verso
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
214
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Papago Indian, Phoenix, AZ
Pen and ink on paper
4 ¼ x 3 ½ inches
Initialed and Monogram lower right
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
215
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Pima Indian
Graphite
5 x 3 ¾ inches
Monogram Pima Phoenix AZ lower right; Authenticated by Edith Hamlin verso
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
216
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Navajo Woman, Child and Horse
Pen & Ink
7 ½ x 5 ¾ inches
Initialed and dated 22 lower right
Estimate: $2,500 - 3,500
217
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Navajo Woman
Graphite
3 ½ x 3 ¾ inches
Initialed and dated 05 lower right
Estimate: $1,000 - 2,000
218 Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Barn and Poplars
Oil on canvas mounted to board 15 ½ x 19 ¼ inches
Signed Carson City, Nev, Oct 1935 lower right;
Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $60,000 - 90,000
Provenance:
Bonhams, Los Angeles, CA, 2004
Santa Fe Art Auction, Santa Fe, NM, 2006
Literature:
Maynard Dixon: Artist of the West. Burnside, Wesley M., Brigham Young University Press. p. 178
Maynard Dixon author Mark Sublette has called the artist the “Edward Hopper of the West,” which rings especially true with a work such as Barn and Poplars. Like Hopper’s works, the painting has simplicity in its brushwork. The paint is neither complicated nor overly manipulated. The brushstrokes are laid down with confidence. And the composition sings, with the wood pile mirroring the roof of the barn, and the poplars creating narrow bars that accentuate the sliver of sky that marks the middle of the painting.
219
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Ranch at Hill Camp, Oregon
Graphite & White Chalk
9 x 11 ¼ inches
Initialed, titled and dated 1901
Estimate: $3,500 - 5,000
221
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Lone Cottonwood
Graphite
7 ½ x 5 ½ inches
Monogram and dated 1937 lower right
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
223
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Indian Encampment
Pen and ink on paper
3 x 5 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
220
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Navajo Desert
Graphite
4 ¾ x 7 inches
Initialed and dated 1935
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
222
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Indian Drummer
Etching
6 x 4 inches
Signed and dated 1920 lower right
Estimate: $600 - 900
224
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Taos, NM 1931
Graphite
4 ½ x 6 ¾ inches
Initialed, titled and dated 1931 lower left
Estimate: $800 - 1,200
225 Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Oasis
Oil on canvas mounted to board 16 x 19 ½ inches
Signed Beatty, Nev. Sept 1935 lower left; Titled verso
Estimate: $60,000 - 90,000
Provenance: Bonhams, Los Angeles, CA, 1999
Literature: Space Silence Spirit: Maynard Dixon’s West, A.P. Hays, Paradise Valley, AZ, 2002: p. 28
The Art of Maynard Dixon, Donald J. Hagerty, Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, 2010: p. 218
Oasis was created in 1935 during a Nevada trip to explore several of the old mining towns, including Virginia City, Silver City and Gold Hill on the famous Comstock Lode. “Dixon painted Oasis in the low desert at Beatty, Nevada, the eastern entrance to Death Valley,” A.P. Hays says of the work. “Such isolated regions seemed to draw the best from his talent.”
226
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Set of Two: Ranchmen
Graphite
6 x 4 ½ inches each
Each dated 01
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
227
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Irrigation
Pen & Ink
4 ¼ x 3 inches
Initialed and dated 1935 lower left
Estimate: $2,000 - 4,000
228
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Thousand Creek Valley, Nevada
Graphite
12 x 15 inches
Initialed, titled and dated 1927 lower left
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
229
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Stockton House Among Trees
Graphite
4 ¾ x 7 ½ inches
“Stockton”, Dated 96 lower left
Estimate: $800 - 1,200
230
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Tucson
Graphite
5 ½ x 5 ½ inches
Initialed, titled and dated 1944 lower right
Estimate: $800 - 1,200
231
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Hill Camp, Oregon
Graphite
8 ½ x 10 inches
Titled and dated June 1901 upper right
Estimate: $1,000 - 2,000
232
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Morning on the San Joaquin Plains Oil on canvas mounted to board 16 x 19 ¾ inches
Signed Sandhill Camp, dated May 1921 lower left;
Signed, titled and dated 1921, Cattle Range lands of the Dixon-Mordecai Ranches verso
Estimate: $45,000 - 65,000
Provenance: Bonhams, Los Angeles, CA, 2000
Literature:
Maynard Dixon: Artist of the West, Burnside, Wesley M., Brigham Young University Press. p. 164
Space Silence Spirit: Maynard Dixon’s West, A.P. Hays, Paradise Valley, AZ, 2002: p. 29
The Art of Maynard Dixon, Donald J. Hagerty, Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, 2010: p. 55
In the spring of 1921, Maynard Dixon spent time recovering from an asthma attack at Refuge, a familiar ranch in Madera County, California. While he was recuperating, he painted several works including Morning on the San Joaquin Plains. As the seasons changed, so did his palette, which is noted by Donald Hagerty in The Art of Maynard Dixon. “…[I]n Morning on the San Joaquin Plains, Dixon has painted an almost minimalist canvas. Now late May, the landscape has changed to the hot colors of summer, heat and dust rising from the dry earth obscuring the line between sky and horizon.”
233
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Traveling Storm Oil on canvas mounted to board 10 x 14 inches
Initialed and dated lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
Literature:
Maynard Dixon’s American West: Along the Distant Mesa, Sublette, Mark, Just Me Publishing, LLC and Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery, Inc.: Illustrated p. 304
Space Silence Spirit: Maynard Dixon’s West, A.P. Hays, Paradise Valley, AZ, 2002: p. 2
The Art of Maynard Dixon, Donald J. Hagerty, Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, 2010: p. 221
This painting was made during a 1937 trip to Carson City, Nevada. The artist and his third wife, Edith Hamlin, were married at the beginning of the trip. “Dixon cloud pictures for years have been thought of as the best in the Western field. They are one of his trademarks,” writes collector A.P. Hays in his book Space Silence Spirit: Maynard Dixon’s West “Many collectors of 25 years ago told the Hayses they wouldn’t buy a Dixon without clouds in it.”
234
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Sasabe
Oil on canvas mounted to board 12 x 16 inches
Signed, titled and dated Jan 1941 lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Literature:
The Art of Maynard Dixon, Donald J. Hagerty, Gibbs Smith, Layton, UT, 2010: p. 231
One of Maynard Dixon’s more well-known small studies, Sasabe was painted in January 1941 during a trip to Southern Arizona. The work is named after the small town located on the Arizona side of the U.S.-Mexico border, about 70 miles southwest of Dixon’s Tucson home.
235
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Evening Clouds
Oil on canvas mounted to board 6 x 8 ½ inches
Titled, and dated May / 5 Tempe, Ariz. Verso
Estimate: $5,000 - 8,000
236
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Cliffs of Betatakin / Canyon Wall Oil on canvas mounted to board 9 x 13 inches
Initialed, titled and dated Aug 1922 lower left; Titled verso
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
237
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
The Cliffs of the Ancients study Oil on board 6 x 9 inches
Signed and dated 1911 lower right; Titled verso
Estimate: $15,000 - 20,000
Literature: Hagerty, D. J., & Dixon, M. (1993). Maynard Dixon: Desert Dreams (First). Gibbs Smith. Illustrated pg. 65. Gibbs, Linda Jones (2000). Escape to Reality: The Western World of Maynard Dixon. Brigham Young University. Illustrated pg. 85
238
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Navajo Song
Watercolor & graphite on paper
4 ¼ x 8 ¼ inches
Signed and dated 1941 lower left
Estimate: $8,000 - 12,000
239
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Apache Camp Oil on board
6 x 8 ½ inches
Initialed “D” and monogram, Apache Aug / 15 lower right; Titled and dated Aug 15 verso
Estimate: $15,000 - 25,000
Literature: Hagerty, D. J., & Dixon, M. (1993). Maynard Dixon: Desert Dreams (First). Gibbs Smith. Illustrated pg. 86 Burnside, Wesley M. (1974). Maynard Dixon: Artist of the West. Brigham Young University Press. pg. 156
240
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Okie
Graphite 14 x 5 ¾ inches
Initialed Calipatria, Cal Feb, 1939 lower right
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
241
Edith Hamlin 1902-1992
Barns Against Mesas Oil on canvas mounted to board 12 x 15 ½ inches
Signed and dated 1947 lower right; Signed and titled Escalante, UT verso
Estimate: $3,000 - 5,000
242
Edith Hamlin 1902-1992
Cactus Country Oil on board 12 x 15 ⅞ inches
Signed and dated 1941 lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
START of REGULAR SESSION II
April 12, 2025 · 1:00 p.m.
243
Carl Rungius 1869-1959
Rams
Etching
6 x 8 ¼ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
244
Carl Rungius 1869-1959
Alarmed
Etching
6 x 8 ⅜ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
245
Carl Rungius 1869-1959
Stampede
Etching
6 x 8 ⅜ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
246
Carl Rungius 1869-1959
Siesta
Etching
7 ¾ x 10 ¾ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
247
Carl Rungius 1869-1959 On the Skyline Etching
8 x 10 ¾ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
248
Carl Rungius 1869-1959 At Timberline Oil on canvas mounted to board 9 x 11 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $9,000 - 12,000
249
Philip R. Goodwin 1882-1935 Set of two: Hiker; Moose Pen & Ink
4 ¾ x 2 ⅝ inches; 9 ½ x 8 ¼ inches Signed lower right; Signed lower left
Estimate: $7,000 - 11,000
Provenance: Carl J. Pugliese Private collection, Texas
250
Bob Kuhn 1920-2007
Set of five: Antelope; Mountain Goats; Black Bear; Rams; Alaskan Brown Bear
Black & White Grisaille
9 x 14; 14 x 9 inches
Estimate: $35,000 - 55,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
Literature:
Elmer Keith’s Big Game Hunting, Elmer Keith, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, MA, 1948: p. 82, 123, 219, 283, 299
Early in his career, Bob Kuhn illustrated Elmer Keith’s Big Game Hunting, an exhaustive and comprehensive book on many of North America’s most iconic animals. Kuhn, who was not yet the wildlife master he is known as today, saw an opportunity within hunting. Decades later, in The Art of Bob Kuhn, he reflected on the subject:
“My own involvement in hunting began when I entered the art market as a young man and found that the so-called outdoor magazines were the logical ones to approach. As I became involved professionally I found that opportunities to go into the field were a by-product of the business and I took advantage of them. When one is involved in the overall objectives of a big game hunt, it is an easy step to being a participant and for many years I was. I felt at the time that it gave my illustrations an aura of authenticity that they would not otherwise have had. In addition, to that, the hides and horns I was accumulating were in constant use as sources of information in my pictures. In recent years my shooting has been limited to a few pheasants, grouse, and ducks for the pot. I truly see no great distinction between eating a fowl whose neck has been rung by someone else and a fowl you have brought in from the field yourself. But there is really more to it than that. There’s a strange human trait of wanting to possess that which you love and many professional hunters of my acquaintance can be truly said to love the wilderness and its wildlife. There is something strongly sensual about a great curling pair of horns, perhaps once worn by a kudu or a Marco Polo sheep, and there is something in many men that makes them want to possess them. Partly this is because they are beautiful and partly it's that they are to some a symbol of manliness, as well as a reminder of a soul-healing sojourn in the wild.”
251
Bob Kuhn 1920-2007
Mountain Lion
Pencil drawing
8 x 10 ½ inches
Signed bottom middle
Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
252
Tim Shinabarger b. 1966 On the Fight Bronze, cast AP/30
17 ¾ inches overall height
Signed Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
253
Hermann Herzog 1832-1932
Indian Hogans, Cal Oil on board 13 x 20 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $5,000 - 8,000
German painter Hermann Herzog completed his art education at the Düsseldorf Academy in 1849 and immediately found work creating artwork for royalty, including Queen Victoria in England and Czar Alexander II in Russia. But the American frontier called to him, and he crossed the Atlantic Ocean and moved to Philadelphia. From there he made journeys into the West, where he was intrigued by the landscape and Native Americans. These subject aren’t identified, but other similar paintings suggest they may have originated in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in northeast California.
254
Edward Hopper 1882-1967
Indian with Peace Pipe Black & White Wash 11 ½ x 8 ¼ inches
Signed lower right; Signed verso
Estimate: $15,000 - 25,000
Provenance:
Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2008
Although undated, Indian with Peace Pipe was likely made around 1900 or 1901, either not long after Edward Hopper graduated from high school in New York or after he started studying at the New York School of Art. Several rare sketches on paper exist from this period showing Native American figures standing in various positions. Hopper experienced a long stagnant period in the early 20th century as he was unsure of where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do, but by the 1920s and 1930s he was creating American masterpieces left and right.
255
Michael Coleman b. 1946
Splithorn Bonnet
Etching and Watercolor
8 ¼ inches x 6 ½ inches
Signed and titled lower right
Estimate: $800 - 1,200
256
James Bama 1926-2022
Purple Scarf
Mixed Media
7 x 5 inches
Signed and dated lower right
Estimate: $5,000 - 7,000
257
Carl Oscar Borg 1879-1947
Navajo Horsemen
Oil on canvas
18 x 24 inches
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Montana
After transitioning out of a successful career in illustration, James Bama turned his attention to people in the West. As his reputation grew, so did demand for his work, including from celebrities. It created a unique dilemma, one that Bama set straight in typical Bama fashion: “Famous people think they can buy you. And they don’t want wrinkles. I’ve said no to George Lucas, Malcolm Forbes and Clint Eastwood. I can make as much money painting someone that I want to paint. I don’t do portraits of people—I paint people. They don’t pay me—I pay them to pose for me.”
In 1916, Carl Oscar Borg headed into Indian Country on behalf of the University of California Department of Ethnology and the United States Bureau of Ethnology. What he found was a life’s dream of subject matter. While he painted several major tribes, it was his experience with the Navajo people of Northern Arizona that transformed him as an artist. “Here one is much nearer the creator of it all,” Borg wrote home, adding that “the Navajo and Hopi land [became] the most interesting in the whole world.” In Carl Oscar Borg and the Magic Region, Helen Laird wrote: “He rode his horse through painted desert and slept on the ground wrapped in a couple of blankets and looked up at the velvet sky. The air was so clear that it looked as though one should be able to reach the stars just by reaching up one’s hands.” That first trip was so transformative that Borg would return to the Southwest for the next 15 years. His subjects gave him a name: Hasten-na-va-ha-sa, or “He Who Comes in the Spring.”
258
Edward Borein 1872-1945
Horse and Rider Watercolor
4 ¾ x 5 ½ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $3,000 - 5,000
259
Oscar Berninghaus 1874-1952
One of the Estufas Watercolor
8 x 11 ½ inches
Signed and titled lower right
Estimate: $2,500 - 4,500
260
Rudolf Kurz 1818-1871
Burial Horse
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $5,000 - 8,000
261
Olaf C. Seltzer 1877-1957
The Peace Pipe
Mixed Media
19 x 13 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $7,000 - 11,000
262
Charles M. Russell 1864-1926
Trigg Silver Series (Complete Set of 10 Sculptures)
Cast Sterling Silver, 78/100
Sizes vary
Signed;
*On a few sculptures reads: “Compliments of CMR 1904”
Estimate: $8,000 - 12,000
Provenance:
Charles M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT, early 1970s
Private collection, Great Falls, MT
Private collection (by descent), Great Falls, MT
Featuring 10 bronzes, including some subjects never sculpted by the artist before or after, the Trigg Silver Series stands as a unique collection of Charles M. Russell bronzes. The 10-sculpture set was originally offered in the 1970s exclusively to museum members at the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana. The series, limited to just 100 editions, was cast in sterling silver using molds taken from the original 1904 bronzes in the museum’s permanent collection. The collection is named after Albert and Margaret Trigg, and their daughter Josephine, who were close with the Russells after they arrived in Great Falls.
263
Z.S. Liang b. 1953
Grandma’s Gift Oil on canvas
25 x 18 inches
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2011 verso
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Wisconsin
264
Paul Moore b. 1957
Warmth of the Buffalo Bronze, cast 2/25
38 ½ inches overall height
Signed and dated 2006; PNSS
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
265
John Moyers b. 1958
20 x 24 inches
Signed/CA and dated 00 lower left
Estimate: $5,000 - 8,000
266
40 x 30 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $7,000 - 11,000
Old Santa Fe Oil on canvas
David Mann b. 1948
The Raised Pipe Oil on canvas
267
Jim Norton 1953-2023
Fresh Tracks in the Snow Oil on canvas
30 x 40 inches
Signed/CA lower left;
Signed/CA, titled and dated 8/13 verso
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance:
Trailside Galleries, Jackson Hole, WY
Private collection, West Lake, TX
Jackson Hole Art Auction, Jackson Hole, WY, 2019
Private collection, California
Utah painter Jim Norton was thoroughly exposed to ranch life and cowboying—both in the United States and in Australia, where he served a two-year religious mission—which added authenticity to his artwork. Additionally, Norton had many artists in his family, and he also studied under the great William Whitaker at Brigham Young University. By the time he struck off on his own, he shot forward quickly in his career. In 1989 he was inducted into the Cowboy Artists of America, where he won numerous awards and gold medals.
268
Jim Norton 1953-2023
Navajos in the Red Rocks Oil on canvas mounted to board 24 x 34 inches
Signed/CA lower left
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance: Private collection, Louisiana
269
Ray Swanson 1937-2004
Preparing for the Dance Oil on canvas
48 x 30 inches
Signed/CA lower right
Estimate: $16,000 - 24,000
Provenance:
Altermann Galleries & Auctioneers, Santa Fe, NM, 2015 Private collection, Wisconsin
Ray Swanson described his early interactions with Native Americans as cautious and careful due to his reticence to make them uncomfortable or uneasy as an outsider prodded them with questions. But that caution and care helped establish Swanson’s entire body of work in the Southwest, all of it involving thoughtful and sensitive depictions of Native Americans. That attentiveness to customs and cultures can be seen here in Preparing for the Dance
270
Ray Swanson 1937-2004
Afternoon Herder
Oil on canvas
18 x 24 inches
Signed and dated 73 lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $5,000 - 8,000
271
Ray Swanson 1937-2004
Hopi Kachina Maker
Oil on board
26 x 20 inches
Signed/CA lower right
Estimate: $8,000 - 12,000
Provenance:
Legacy Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2016
Private collection, Wisconsin
Ray Swanson didn’t look back into time for his Native American subjects. Instead, he focused on present-day communities in Northern Arizona and Northern New Mexico. The resulting body of work depicted people not as they once were, but as they were when Swanson visited them. For many viewers, it was a refreshing twist on Western art. Key subjects within his work were children and small animals, but also fellow artists, as seen here in Hopi Kachina Maker The work was part of a series of Native American artists that included weavers, potters, jewelers and Hopi carvers.
Making Friends
10 x 16 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
36 x 24 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $8,000 - 12,000
272
Carrie Ballantyne b. 1956
Colored Pencil
273
Bonnie Marris b. 1951
Evening on Cold Water Creek Oil on canvas
274
Olaf Wieghorst 1899-1988
Omera’s Linda Oil on canvas
24 x 30 inches
Signed lower left; Photo of original horse verso, dated 1951
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Wisconsin
275
Olaf Wieghorst 1899-1988
Watering his Pony Oil on canvas
20 x 24 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $9,000 - 12,000
276
Tom Lovell 1909-1997
Catchers of Wild Horses study
Charcoal
22 x 36 inches
Signed/CA and dated 1995 lower left
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
277
Tom Lovell 1909-1997
Battle of the Crater Oil on board
8 ½ x 6 ½ inches
Signed and dated Feb 1966 lower left “To Tom Dauer”
Estimate: $5,000 - 7,000
278
Tom Lovell 1909-1997
Even Trade Oil on canvas
20 x 30 inches
Signed/NWA and dated 1976 lower right; Signed verso
Estimate: $30,000 - 40,000
Provenance:
Altermann & Morris Galleries, Santa Fe, NM, 1996
Morris & Whiteside Auctions, Hilton Head Island, SC, 2002
Private collection, California
Prior to his fine art career, Tom Lovell spent 39 years in the field of illustration, where he created images for Collier’s, McCall’s, National Geographic, Leatherneck for the U.S. Marine Corps and countless pulp magazines. This long build-up to his easel paintings allowed him to hone his craft, most notably his ability to tell concise and effective stories. Here, in 1976’s Even Trade, Lovell’s narrative is clear: a pioneer offers eagle feathers in a trade with a Native American from the plains. The pioneer’s simple gesture of pointed and parallel index fingers signifies his willingness to trade the feathers for the horse. Lovell created drama by allowing some mystery in the Native American’s body language, which suggests the trade may be unfavorable.
279
Edward Borein 1872-1945
Checkin’ the Herd Watercolor
11 x 15 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance:
Collection of Sue and Ted Dalzell, Santa Barbara, CA
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Reno, NV, 2012
Private collection, Wisconsin
Edward Borein worked in many mediums, but his watercolors are uniquely treasured among his large body of work. The artist experimented with the medium during travels in Mexico from 1897 to 1903, but then nearly abandoned it during a long stretch in New York from 1907 to 1919. It was during the 1930s in Santa Barbara, California, when watercolor took hold of him. “Edward Borein, in company with every painter of note, had his bad days. No artist who ever lived produced a ceaseless flow of flawless masterworks, but for a self-taught artist in this most demanding of mediums, Borein achieved wonders,” writes Harold G. Davidson in Edward Borein: Cowboy Artist. “He can claim his rightful place among the pioneer watercolorists of the West.”
280
Edward Borein 1872-1945
10 x 15 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance: Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ 2012 Private collection, Wisconsin
281
Edward Borein 1872-1945 Bucker Watercolor 8 x 6 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
Snorty Bull Watercolor
282
Frank McCarthy 1924-2002
Lost Tracks in Medicine Creek Oil on canvas
24 x 40 inches
Signed/CA and dated 1988 lower left
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Provenance: Private collection, Michigan
Frank McCarthy painted Native Americans from many tribes and in many regions of the country, but none thrilled him like the Plains Indians of the 1800s. “We still see him today in the collective memory of our national folklore: the proud, bold, graceful warrior-hunter on horseback, the Plains Indian in brilliant panoply of paint and feathers, shouting a blood cry as he charges headlong against his enemy. We see him as a mystic soul living close to nature, moving his tepee villages at will to follow the migrations of the buffalo, the life-giving rains, the greening grass, and leaving the land as he found it,” Elmer Kelton wrote in The Art of Frank McCarthy. “The image is real. It flourished during a brief and colorful period in the American past. It is a favorite image of painter Frank McCarthy, whose works evoke its spectacle and drama, its heroism and its tragedy.” Lost Tracks in Medicine Creek speaks to the artist’s affection for the Plains Indians and the power they wield in American lore and legend.
283
Frank McCarthy 1924-2002
War Party Oil on board
24 x 36 inches
Signed and dated 71 lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance: Private collection, Louisana
Literature:
The Western Paintings of Frank C. McCarthy, Frank McCarthy. Ballantine Books Inc., New York, New York, 1974
284
Frank McCarthy 1924-2002
The Scout Oil on board
12 x 9 inches
Signed lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
285
Bill Owen 1942-2013
Gold Dust
Oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
Signed/CA and dated 2005 lower right
Estimate: $30,000 - 40,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
Raised as a cowboy in some of Arizona’s most remote and isolated country, Bill Owen exemplified the need to have the authentic West within Western art. He brought this ethos, and his enthusiasm, to the Cowboy Artists of America when he was inducted into the group in 1973. Owen created both paintings and sculpture early in his career, but after a 1989 rodeo accident took his sight from one eye he abandoned sculpture to focus on two-dimensional work. The limited vision didn’t slow him down; he produced many of his greatest works well into the 1990s and 2000s.
286
Charlie Dye 1906-1972
El Cabestro Oil on board
19 x 29 inches
Signed/CA lower left
Estimate: $15,000 - 20,000
Provenance: Private collection, California
Literature:
One Helluva Painter. Paul Weaver. Paul Waver & Steven Dye. United States, 1981. p. 43
287
Frank McCarthy 1924-2002
Turning the Leader Oil on board
24 x 30 inches
Signed and dated 75 lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance: Private collection, Louisiana
288
Gary
Back
Oil on canvas
42 x 50 inches
Signed bottom right
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
This painting tells a story of the emerging growth of a small town with the addition of oil derricks on the horizon. One can only imagine what the cowhands were thinking while riding through town after gathering their supplies. This painting depicts an era in time that produced an abundance of change. I think I would have said; OK fellas lets head “Back to the Ranch”. -Gary Lynn Roberts
Lynn Roberts b. 1953
to the Ranch
289
Don Oelze b. 1965
Last Stand At San Miguel Oil on canvas
42 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $18,000 - 24,000
This painting captures a group of Apache warriors making their final stand against Mexican soldiers amid the crumbling ruins of an old Spanish mission. The weathered stone walls and cracked arch create a dramatic backdrop, with their silent decay contrasting with the intense movement and energy of the battle in the foreground. I saw the mission ruins as the perfect setting for this scene, as their aged, rugged presence highlights the strength and determination of the Apache warriors. The interplay between the stillness of the ruins and the fierce action brings the story to life, capturing a powerful and timeless moment. - Don Oelze
290
Dave McGary 1958-2013
Bear Tracks
Bronze, cast 11/30
46 ¼ inches overall height
Signed; Thumbprint in bronze
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
291
Dave McGary 1958-2013
Bounty of Grey Hawk
Bronze, cast 26/30
37 inches overall height
Signed, dated, and thumbprint
Estimate: $12,000 - 22,000
Provenance: Private collection, Colorado
Dave McGary grew up on a ranch in Cody, Wyoming. As a teenager, he met Harry Jackson and earned a grant to study with the famous sculptor in Italy. Later, after extensive experience in bronze foundries, McGary became interested in Native Americans. It’s this work, much of it completed as polychrome bronzes, that cemented McGary’s place in Western art. “An artist looks into his soul and presents…visions to the world. When McGary looks into his soul, he sees a picture of himself and his world and how that world has been profoundly affected by and connected to Native American culture,” writes Michael Duty in Dave McGary: American Realism in Bronze. “The result is a series of dramatic, deeply felt portraits of Indian leaders, warriors and ordinary people as well—all made extraordinary because they represent entire cultures and not simply individuals.”
292
Dave McGary 1958-2013
Blessing of the Bear Bronze, cast 37/40
42 inches overall height
Signed; Thumbprint in bronze
Estimate: $15,000 - 25,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
In Dave McGary: American Realism in Bronze, author Michael Duty writes about McGary’s use of texture, which can be seen here in the masterwork version of Blessing of the Bear. “The clear evocation of character is one of the most successful elements of the sculpture but there are other techniques and qualities that are equally telling. Texture has been rendered here in a startlingly realistic manner. While the entire sculpture, of course, is composed of the same bronze material, one notices immediately the way McGary has duplicated the actual contrasts of texture between each element—the wood of the club, the feathers, the beads, the skin of the man, the leather leggings—all these items have such a strong sense of reality that one imagines them to have been made of the very things that they represent.”
293
Dave McGary 1958-2013
Iron Hail Bronze, cast 7/40
42 ½ inches overall height & 44 inches wide
Signed; Thumbprint in bronze
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
294
Earl Biss 1947-1998
High Mountain Camp Oil on canvas
50 x 60 inches
Signed upper right; Signed, titled and dated 89 verso
Estimate: $35,000 - 55,000
Provenance: Private collection, Colorado
Born in Washington and raised on the Crow reservation in Montana, Earl Biss quickly discovered the artist he would become after continuing his art education in Santa Fe and San Francisco, and then traveling to Europe, where he was influenced by the work of Monet and other French Impressionists. Back in the states, Biss studied under fellow Native American artists Fritz Scholder, Charles Loloma and Allan Houser, and received his first solo show with famed Western tastemaker Elaine Horwitch. Sadly, Biss died somewhat young at the age of 51, his rising career cut tragically short. His legacy survives as his paintings continue to be found in major collections around the world. Museum collections include the Heard Museum, Philbrook Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institute, Denver Art Museum and many others. Biss has also been part of a dramatic reappraisal of contemporary Native American art and its role within the larger Western art world. Artists like Scholder, Houser, Oscar Howe, T.C. Cannon and Biss are part of an important group of Indigenous artists whose influence on present-day Western art is unmistakable, further reaffirming the role of Native American artists within all segments of American art.
295 Kevin Red Star b. 1943 Raven Headdress Oil on canvas
36 x 30 inches
Signed lower right; Titled and dated 1990 verso
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
296 Fritz Scholder 1937-2005
Deco Indian Acrylic on paper
12 x 8 ½ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $4,500 - 6,500
297
Fritz Scholder 1937-2005
Indians and Persian Rug
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 40 inches
Signed lower right; Titled and dated 1978 verso
Estimate: $100,000 - 150,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
In 1967, Fritz Scholder promised to never paint a Native American figure, a subject he thought had fallen into disgraceful cliché. But later the artist, who was part Luiseño, broke his promise and changed the trajectory of his career. “Standing before his students one day, he grew frustrated with their inability to create an ‘honest’ representation of current American Indians. So he carried his brushes and paints into the studio classroom and quickly filled the canvas with the figure he pledged to avoid. The same subject that would eventually define his works,” writes Jordan Steffen in the Smithsonian Magazine. “Scholder’s decision to break his promise marked a fierce turning point for campaign on behalf of Native American rights and for American Indian artists.”
298
Fritz Scholder 1937-2005
Buffalo Back
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 40 inches
Signed lower middle
Estimate: $80,000 - 120,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
In the 1960s, as Western art was becoming more traditional in the face of modern art, Fritz Scholder was exploring what it meant to live in the West as a Native American, even as the Luiseño artist had barely identified as a Native American. The work he made transcended what Indigenous art could be, and it created a new modern movement within Western art that persists today. Born in Missouri, Scholder bounced around the Midwest with his family until they settled in Sacramento, California. There, at Sacramento State University, he was urged to explore Pop Art by Wayne Thiebaud, who helped the young artist get his first solo show.
Starting in 1964, Scholder taught for five years at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Frustrated with what he wanted to paint, Scholder quit AIAI and traveled in Europe and Africa. In 1970, he returned to Santa Fe with several new skills—mixed media, sculpture, lithography, etchings and monotypes—and a renewed sense for what he wanted to create. The work completed in his studio spoke to his complicated Native American identity, the way Native people are viewed in American culture and life in the desert Southwest. He painted vast fields of color in solid hues, broken and fragmented figures, stylized depictions of wildlife and sacred ceremonies seen through a lens of abstract expressionism. More akin to Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko and Pablo Picasso than any Western artist, Scholder helped usher in a new age of modern art in the Southwest.
299
Allan Houser 1914-1994
Smoke Signal
Bronze, cast 4/15
54 ½ inches overall height
Signed and dated 93
Estimate: $55,000 - 85,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
Literature:
Allan Houser, An American Master, W. Jackson Rushing III, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2004: p. 238
Smoke Signal is one of the most acclaimed works by Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser, whose contemporary visions of Native American figures pushed his classically Western subjects into the realm of modern art. The bronze was first created in 1993 after Houser was invited to participate in the Prix de West exhibition at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. The bronze won the museum purchase prize, and a cast (one of only 15) now resides in the museum’s permanent collection. Houser was the first Native American to win the top honor at the museum.
300
Allan Houser 1914-1994
Lovers
Bronze, cast 4/12
16 ½ inches overall height
Signed and dated 1987
Estimate: $8,000 - 12,000
301
Allan Houser 1914-1994 Mountain Spirit Dancer Bronze, cast 13/25
25 ¼ inches overall height
Signed and dated 1993; AHI
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
302
John Nieto 1936-2018
Apache
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 30 inches
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2013 verso
Estimate: $18,000 - 24,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
John Nieto spent much of his life in three states—Colorado, Texas and New Mexico—and yet his work was some of the most well-traveled work in the West. Not only did Nieto famously show his art in Paris, where he was influenced by Franch Fauvism, but it traveled all around the world as part of the Art in Embassies program starting in 1982. His work represented the Southwest in far-reaching places such as Peru, Bolivia, Egypt, Bahrain, Luxembourg, Thailand, Venezuela and others.
303
John Nieto 1936-2018
Coyote Self Portrait
Acrylic on canvas
24 x 30 inches
Signed upper right
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
304
John Nieto 1936-2018
Coyote on the Snow
Acrylic on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Signed upper left; Signed, titled and dated 2001 verso
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
The coyote is a symbol that repeats in numerous tribes across the country, including in notable stories by the Crow, Caddo, Cheyenne, Lakota, Apache and Tewa people. While the coyote often serves as a “trickster” character, who is cunning and mischievous, the coyote also has large roles in creation myths and stories about the universe. Here, John Nieto has painted two coyotes in his distinctive fauvist style with bold colors and strong forms.
305
John Nieto 1936-2018
Chief
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 60 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance:
Old Hat Auctions, Houston, TX, 2005
Private collection, Colorado
John Nieto famously painted his Native American subjects abstract enough to render their individual tribes obscure and mysterious. The idea was to paint them as if they were from one universal tribe united by their similar customs and symbolism. “I am painting a person, but I am painting much more than that,” the artist said, adding that his art “is the result of an emotional involvement with my subject matter rather than a cerebral one.” That is evident here in Chief, a large painting that shows his loose adherence to fauvism, the modern art movement that prioritizes bold brushstrokes and powerful color over realistic representation. Born in Colorado, Nieto went to school in Texas and then established a studio in New Mexico. During his career, he exhibited at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.; he met President Reagan in the Oval Office; presented work at the Salon d’Autumn at the Grand Palais in Paris; and received the New Mexico Governor’s Award of Achievement. His work was respected during his lifetime, but his colorful paintings of Native Americans—compared favorably to the work of Matisse, T.C. Cannon and Fritz Scholder—have seen renewed interest in the years since his 2018 passing. Today, Nieto is regarded as an early and important figure in the contemporary Western art movement of the late-20th century.
306
John Nieto 1936-2018
Jack Red Cloud
Acrylic on canvas
24 x 30 inches
Signed lower left;
Signed, titled and dated 1993 verso
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
307
30 x 40 inches
Signed and dated 2010 lower left
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
William Acheff b. 1947
Split Horn Bonnet Oil on canvas
308
William
12 x 10 inches
Signed and dated 2008 lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2008 verso
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
309
Night Song Oil on canvas
24 x 20 inches
Signed lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
Acheff b. 1947
One Hunter Oil on canvas
William Acheff b. 1947
310
Jerry Jordan b. 1944
Reverence For Mother Earth Oil on canvas
12 x 12 inches
Signed “T.A.O.S” lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
311
Jerry Jordan b. 1944
Dreams Become a Source of Destiny Oil on canvas
28 x 26 inches
Signed “T.A.O.S.” lower left; Signed, titled and dated 2023 verso
Estimate: $16,000 - 24,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
312
Jerry Jordan b. 1944
Transends the Purely Visible Oil on canvas
43 x 45 inches
Signed lower right “T.A.O.S.”; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $45,000 - 65,000
Provenance:
Private collection, New Mexico
313
R.S. Riddick b. 1952 Mountain Song Oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches
Signed/CA and dated 2003 lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2003 verso
Estimate: $15,000 - 20,000
Provenance: Private collection, Colorado
Estimate:
Provenance:
Private collection, Arizona
314
Thomas Blackshear b. 1955
High Hat Oil on canvas 31 x 23 ¼ inches
Signed lower right
$20,000 - 30,000
315
Frank McCarthy 1924-2002
Bringing Out the Furs Oil on board
24 x 48 inches
Signed/CA and dated 1980 lower left
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
Literature: The Art of Frank McCarthy, Elmer Kelton, Greenwich Workshop, Seymour, CT, 1992: p. 46-47
“Trappers, their pack animals laden with pelts, cautiously make their way across a snow-patched mountain pass in search of virgin waters for their beaver traps,” wrote the artist in his 1992 book, The Art of Frank McCarthy. “These adventurers were often the first whites into unexplored territory, putting themselves in harm’s way but acquiring a valuable knowledge of the land.”
316
Frank McCarthy 1924-2002
Tracking the Herd Oil on canvas
26 x 40 inches
Signed lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
Like many other artists of his day, Frank McCarthy cut his teeth in the world of illustration, first with magazines and later with book covers and movie posters. After he moved West in 1974, all of his attention turned to Western art. By then, McCarthy had already established his trademark style, which included action and realism. “Realism is perhaps the only stylistic term which can be applied to McCarthy’s painting,” wrote James Ballinger in The Art of Frank McCarthy. “Following a tradition established by landscape artists of the mid-19th century, his attention to each detail in the landscape and main subject is carefully delineated. The clarity of space and sharpness of light sets McCarthy’s work apart from any other painter of his day. Whether the subject of a painting is a stampede occurring out front of a thunderstorm, or a buffalo hunt taking place on a clear summer day on the high plains, the event seems to exist in a vacuum. This technique allows no interference between the subject and viewer, providing the painter the opportunity to report the details of the stampede or hunt with tremendous immediacy.”
317
Edward Borein 1872-1945
Mexican Vaquero
Watercolor
14 ¾ x 19 ½ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $30,000 - 45,000
Provenance:
Will Rogers, Pacific Palisades, CA
James B. Rogers, Bakersfield, CA
James K. Rogers (Kem), Lynnville, TN
In the family by decent
318
Edward Borein 1872-1945
Four Mounted Cowboys
Watercolor
7 ¾ x 9 ½ inches
Signed lower left
Unfinished painting verso (image available on our website)
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance:
Will Rogers, Pacific Palisades, CA
James B. Rogers, Bakersfield, CA
James K. Rogers (Kem), Lynnville, TN
In the family by decent
Edward Borein spent 12 years in New York City starting in 1907. It was a formative period for the artist, and it was in New York where he met Charles M. Russell and Will Rogers, who became a fervent supporter of the artist. Both Mexican Vaquero and Four Mounted Cowboys come from the Will Rogers collection. “Like Will Rogers, Ed Borein grew up on a cattle ranch and became immersed in cowboy culture. While on the range he sketched the adventures of his travels throughout California, Oregon, and Mexico. He also became adept at cowboy crafts such as lasso braiding, saddle making, and iron work,” notes the Will Rogers Ranch Foundation. “…In the October 30, 1932, edition of the Tulsa Daily World, Rogers reflected, ‘Ed makes the best Western etchings of anybody. He is a real cowpuncher, and knows the California ‘Buckaroo’ and the old Mexico ‘Vaquero’ better than any artist living.’”
These Borein watercolors, given to Rogers by the artist, are some of the only surviving artworks from the Will Rogers Ranch. Prior to Rogers deeding the ranch to the state of California, which would turn the property into the Will Rogers State Historic Park, the actor and performer selected these works for his personal collection. In January 2025, the Palisades Fire tore through the park, destroying Rogers’ home, barn and a significant portion of the art collection.
319
Edward Borein 1872-1945
Cattle Drive
Watercolor
15 x 20 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $18,000 - 28,000
Provenance:
Purchased from artist
Descended through the family of Clayton M. DeMott Jr. Brian Lebel’s Old West Auction, Santa Fe, NM, 2012
Private collection, Missouri
Cattle Drive, also known as Cowboy Herding Cattle, is a classic example of the work of Edward Borein, whose oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and etchings told the story of working cowboys throughout the Southwest. Borein was one of the earliest Western artists born in the West—in San Leandro, California, in 1872, a full three years before Maynard Dixon in Fresno. At the age of 17, he drifted as a cowboy and artist, then turned to illustration. As Borein rose through the ranks, he became friends with an array of important figures: Charles M. Russell, Theodore Roosevelt, journalist Charles Lummis, Carl Oscar Borg, Olaf C. Seltzer, Childe Hassam, Will Rogers and others. The painting is addressed to Clayton M. DeMott Jr. on the Hope Ranch in Santa Barbara, California.
320
Ed Mell 1942-2024
Western Gap I Oil on linen
18 x 24 inches
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2021 verso
Estimate: $28,000 - 38,000
Literature:
Western Art Collector, Michael Clawson, Scottsdale, AZ, February 2022: p. 82
Provenance:
Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ, 2022
Private collection, Arizona
While many artists have been strongly linked to Arizona—including Thomas Moran, Maynard Dixon and Philip C. Curtis— few have been embedded in the mythos and culture of the Grand Canyon State as deeply as Ed Mell. The painter was born in Arizona and, except for a brief period in New York City working as an illustrator, lived his entire life in the state. His work has appeared in and on the cover of Arizona Highways, was featured on Arizona’s Centennial stamp in 2012 and his monument Jack Knife stands at the center of the Scottsdale Arts District. His passing in February 2024 at the age of 81 received news coverage around the Southwest.
Mell is known today for his abstracted landscapes of the Southwest, but his work was more representational when he started in the 1970s. As he traveled Arizona, sometimes by helicopter, he began to gravitate toward the unique light and forms that the desert offered. His later paintings could sway from realistic landscapes with slightly exaggerated renderings of the land to full-blown abstract works with clusters of shattered geometry that loosely interpreted into desert thunderstorms, dry river valleys and monolithic rock formations. Western Gap I, created just three years before he died, is representative of his more modern sensibilities.
321
Ed Mell 1942-2024
Clouds and Cacti Oil on linen
24 x 18 inches
Signed lower left; Signed, titled and dated 2017 verso
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Arizona
322
Ed Mell 1942-2024
Expanse of the Desert Oil on linen
15 x 48 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $30,000 - 40,000
Provenance: Private collection, Indiana circa 1995
Likely created in 1995 for a solo show at Suzanne Brown Gallery, Ed Mell’s Expanse of the Desert shows a panoramic view of Arizona in all its glory with low-lying mesas, rocky desert peaks and a brilliant cloudscape. Mell would acquire much of his reference material by either driving Arizona roads or flying through its skies in a helicopter, which could maneuver places a car couldn’t, allowing the artist to glimpse stunning views few have ever seen.
323
Ed Mell 1942-2024
Western Bronc
Oil on linen
24 x 18 inches
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2007 verso
Estimate: $28,000 - 38,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Santa Barbara, CA
Altermann Galleries & Auctioneers, Santa Fe, NM, 2018 Bonhams, Los Angeles, CA, 2020 Private collection, Washington
Western Bronc is a more abstracted, even cubist, version of Ed Mell’s most famous work, Jack Knife rendered in paint in 1985, as a small wax maquette in 1992 and in bronze monument in 1993. Painted in 2007, Western Bronc shows the horse still planted on the ground moments before it leaps into the air to create that famous arching shape with the cowboy clinging to its back. In addition to the more fragmented forms, Mell also blended his colors on the edges of the broken panes of colors, creating an illusion of dust, movement and chaotic energy.
324
Ed Mell 1942-2024
Jack Knife
Bronze, cast 18/35
14 ¼ inches overall height
Signed
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance: Private collection, Washington
First created in 1992 as a hand-worked wax maquette for an open competition (the second of two) hosted by Scottsdale, Arizona, Jack Knife is Ed Mell’s most iconic bronze. The Phoenix painter won the competition and a monument of Jack Knife was installed in 1993 in the roundabout at Marshall Way and Main Street. “Jack Knife has a reverence for the Old West,” the artist wrote in Beyond the Visible Terrain: The Art of Ed Mell. “It is not traditional, but yet it has a traditional theme. The angularity accelerates the power and energy of the rider and horse, more than accurate depiction.”
325 Phil Epp b. 1946
Looking Back Oil on canvas
40 x 40 inches
Signed/CA lower left; Signed/CA and titled verso
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Few scenes in nature are more moving than viewing a full moonrise on a pristine expansive horizon. I have witnessed similar scenes numerous times and have attempted to share in this painting some of the grandeur of this fleeting moment . - Phil Epp
30 x 24 inches
Signed/CA and dated 2002 lower right
Estimate: $45,000 - 65,000
Provenance: Private collection, Indiana
326
Martin Grelle b. 1954
Piegan Sundown Oil on canvas
40
Signed/CA and dated 2021 lower right; Signed/CA, titled and dated 2021 verso
Estimate: $125,000 - 175,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
327
Martin Grelle b. 1954
Wolves in Yellowstone Country Oil on canvas
x 48 inches
30 x 40 inches
Signed/CA and dated 98 lower right
Estimate: $70,000 - 100,000
Provenance: Private collection, Wisconsin
328
Martin Grelle b. 1954 Warrior’s Quest Oil on canvas
329
John Coleman b. 1949
The Greeter Bronze, cast 7/15
78 ½ inches overall height
Signed/CA, titled and dated 2011
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Literature
Past | Present | Future. Scottsdale's Museum of the West, Scottsdale, Arizona, 2017. p. 29
The Art of John Coleman: Spirit Lives Legends, John Coleman, SF Design / Fresco Books, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2024: p. 109 & 139
330
John Coleman b. 1949
Pitatapiu, Bowlance Warrior Bronze, 29/35
39 inches overall height
Signed/CA, titled and dated 2007
Estimate: $15,000 - 25,000
Provenance: Private collection, Florida
Literature
Past | Present | Future. Scottsdale's Museum of the West, Scottsdale, Arizona, 2017. p. 48
The Art of John Coleman: Spirit Lives Legends, John Coleman, SF Design / Fresco Books, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2024: p. 125
331
John Coleman b. 1949
Addih-Hiddisch-Hidatsa Chief Bronze, 4/35
34 inches overall height
Signed/CA, titled and dated 04
Estimate: $15,000 - 25,000
Provenance: Private collection, Florida
Literature
Past | Present | Future. Scottsdale's Museum of the West, Scottsdale, Arizona, 2017. p. 42
The Art of John Coleman: Spirit Lives Legends, John Coleman, SF Design / Fresco Books, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2024: p. 115
48
Signed/CA lower right
Estimate: $60,000 - 90,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Texas
332
John Coleman b. 1949
Crazy Horse, 1876
Oil on canvas
x 29 inches
333
Mark Maggiori b. 1977
Sunset Rider
Oil on canvas mounted to board
8 ¾ x 10 ½ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $7,000 - 11,000
334
Mark Maggiori b. 1977
3 Riders
Mixed Media
11 x 15 inches
Signed and dated 2016 lower left
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
335
Mark Maggiori b. 1977
Single Rider
Graphite
8 ¾ x 6 ¾ inches
Signed and dated 2016 lower left
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
18 x 32 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
336
Mark Maggiori b. 1977
Mariposa Afterglow Oil on board
337
Z.S. Liang b. 1953
Ojibwe Hunter Oil on canvas 38 x 38 inches
Signed lower left; Signed and dated 2021 verso
Estimate: $35,000 - 50,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
338
Z.S. Liang b. 1953
Where the Rivers Begin Oil on canvas
48 x 36 inches
Signed lower left; Signed, titled and dated 2021 verso
Estimate: $45,000 - 65,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
After the Storm Clears Oil on linen
30 x 40 inches
Signed lower left; Signed and dated 2014 verso
Estimate: $60,000 - 90,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
339
Logan Maxwell Hagege b. 1980
Logan
Familiar Land Oil on linen 43 x 40 inches
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2022 verso
Estimate: $65,000 - 85,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
340
Maxwell Hagege b. 1980
Signed upper right
Estimate: $30,000 - 40,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
341
Eric Bowman b. 1960
Autumn Tapestry Oil on canvas 36 x 46 inches
342
Glenn Dean b. 1976
Riders of the Vermillion Cliffs Oil on canvas
30 x 30 inches
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2019 verso
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Montana
343
Brandon Bailey b. 1984
When the Night Winds Blow Up a Squall Oil on board
30 x 60 inches
Signed/CA lower left
Estimate: $16,000 - 22,000
Growing up in Wyoming, it is only fitting that I have an interest in western culture. My fascination with rodeo and the old west began during my childhood and has continued throughout my life. In November 2021, I was inducted into the Cowboy Artists of America. - Brandon Bailey
344
30 x 48 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $15,000 - 25,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Texas
Tim Solliday b. 1952
Frontier Trading Oil on linen
345
Chad Poppleton b. 1976
Legends and Lore Oil on board
24 x 39 ½ inches
Signed/CA lower left; Signed/CA, titled and dated 2025 verso
Estimate: $14,000 - 18,000
346
40 x 70 inches
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2024 verso
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Colt Idol b. 1992 Prairie Stories Oil on canvas
G. Harvey 1933-2017
The American Dream
Literature:
The Golden Era: The American Dream — G. Harvey, Somerset House Publishing, Fulshear, TX, 1992: cover, p. 38
The Western Series: G Harvey. Somerset House Publishing, Houston, Texas, 2001. p. 105
Although G. Harvey is known widely in the West for his images of working cowboys and Texas Hill Country, the prominent painter was quite prolific in the genre of city scenes far removed from the West. These images include scenes of trolleys and horse-drawn carriages on snowy streets, flower markets in crowded squares and scenes of people enjoying shop-lined boulevards. Not only did he paint great American cities such as Boston and New York City, but he also traveled far and wide to paint Paris, Moscow and London. Like his Western works, the pieces had all the hallmarks of a G. Harvey painting: gorgeously painted light from a variety of sources, figures framed within luscious paint as they walk straight at the viewer and his turn-of-the-century setting right before cars roared on the streets. Harvey also frequently painted our nation’s capital, which allowed him to underline several patriotic motifs that run through his body of work, including his frequent use of American flags and scenes near statehouses and historic courthouses.
His fascination with Washington, D.C., reached its apex in 1992 when Harvey created the Treasury Collection: Symbols of the Republic, a four-piece series of lithographs to benefit the Treasury Historical Association, which needed funds for the preservation and restoration of the Treasury Building, located immediately adjacent to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. Partnering with the artist was Somerset House Publishing, which had produced Harvey’s prints starting in 1983. Four original oil paintings were made for the Treasury Collection in 1992: Pinnacle of Freedom showing the Washington Monument, Pillars of Strength showing the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue featuring the White House and, represented here with this lot, The American Dream showing the United States Capitol.
The American Dream and the other three works from the series don’t appear in the first edition of the artist’s book The Golden Era: A Celebration of Light — G. Harvey because it was published in 1990, two years before the works were created. But when Harvey created a second edition of the book, retitled as The Golden Era: The American Dream — G. Harvey, he not only included a small chapter on the Treasury Collection, but he also put The American Dream on the cover (a copy of this book will accompany this lot). “Inspired by the dignity and elegance of our nation’s capital city, G. Harvey created four masterpieces of its most enduring symbols—that will stir emotions of patriotism and pride in all,” wrote Randy Best in the book’s second edition. “A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each print in this historic series was designated to further the missions of the Treasury Historical Association, which include the preservation and restoration of the Treasury Building. A monumental structure, it appears on our $10 bill and is the governmental foundation of our economy. Since 1985, several restoration projects in the building have brought various rooms and spaces to their original design of the mid-19th century.”
In 1992, not long after it was painted, The American Dream was loaned from Harvey’s personal collection to the Art in Embassies program within the U.S. Department of State. The loan was conceived as a show of support to fellow Texan Robert Strauss, the United States’ ambassador to Russia. The painting hung in the American embassy in Moscow for at least a year. The work was on display in the embassy at a pivotal time for U.S.-Russian relations as the fall of the Soviet Union had only concluded in December 1991, roughly four months prior to the arrival of the painting in Moscow.
347
G. Harvey 1933-2017
The American Dream Oil on canvas
48 x 36 inches
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and dated 1991 verso
Estimate: $250,000 - 350,000
Provenance: G. Harvey estate
348
G. Harvey 1933-2017
Neighborhood Markets Oil on canvas
24 x 20 inches
Signed lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance:
Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2018 Private collection, Texas
Neighborhood Markets speaks to G. Harvey’s nostalgia for the America of his youth. “The great difference between all of man’s earlier history and modern conveniences was more pronounced in cities at the turn of the century than in rural settings,” writes Randy Best in The Golden Era: The American Dream — G. Harvey. “The first electric lights illuminated city streets and, for a moment in time, horseless carriages and horse-drawn transportation shared cobblestone streets. A romantic era burned for a decade or so before a great rush of technology overwhelmed it, and the world was changed forever. We are the last generation to have known men and women who, as boys and girls, chased the first automobiles around town squares and watched as the first generation of airplanes bounced out of cow pastures into a summer breeze.”
349
G. Harvey 1933-2017 Light Morning Showers Oil on board
12 x 9 inches
Signed lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance: Private collection, California
350
G. Harvey 1933-2017
Flower Market Oil on canvas 36 x 30 inches
Signed lower left; Signed, titled and dated 1993 verso
Estimate: $100,000 - 150,000
Provenance: G. Harvey estate
Literature: A Father. A Hero. Dr. James Dobson. Multhomah Gifts. Sisters, Oregon, 2005. p. 107
Founded in 1809, the Park Street Church in Boston, has served Bostonians for more than two centuries. G. Harvey painted the church in a handful of paintings, including here in Flower Market. The artist relates in his book The Golden Era: The American Dream how he walked the modern-day city looking for areas he could transport back to a simpler time.
“Transition has also been a theme in my art. I’m drawn to eras when people were confronted with change—challenged to use change as a positive force in their lives,” Harvey writes. “The Golden Era that surrounded the turn of the 20th century in America is one of these periods. It was a point in time when many a young man and woman left the rural life for the bright lights of the city. My dad was one of these people. And, in a way, so am I. When I stop to think about it, it's been the bright lights of the all-American city that have brought about my most recent body of paintings. The contrasts of those lights against a gray day or darkened evening is so exciting to me! Perhaps no more exciting, however, than to the people who lived during that brief period when the first streetlamps turned night into a warmly lit, nonthreatening place where social activities and errands could take place. There was at this time a virtual celebration of light, and it’s the spirit of celebration that I’m trying to capture in the way light explodes across my paintings.”
351 Joe Beeler 1931-2006
The Night Song Bronze, cast 6/30
22 inches overall height
Signed/CA
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
352 Tom Lovell 1909-1997
Cheyenne Dog Rope Man
Oil on canvas
32 x 22 inches
Signed/NAWA lower right
Estimate: $45,000 - 65,000
Provenance: Private collection, Idaho
353 Tom Lovell 1909-1997
24 ¼ x 42 inches
Signed and dated 1984 lower left; Signed, dated 1984 and description verso
Estimate: $125,000 - 175,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
The Abandoned Dream Oil on canvas
353
The Abandoned Dream (detail)
Oil on canvas
24 ¼ x 42 inches
Signed and dated 1984 lower left; Signed, dated 1984 and description verso
Estimate: $125,000 - 175,000
Literature: A preparatory charcoal is listed in:
Drawing from Experience. Tony Altermann & Jack A. Morris, Jr. Altermann & Morris Galleries, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1997. p. 30
Tom Lovell was a master storyteller, the product of many years working as a New York illustrator creating images for stories about detectives, cowboys, soldiers, sailors and adventurers. He was also a master at titling his paintings. Decisive words in short titles often expanded the story even further. Such is the case here in The Abandoned Dream, a masterful painting from 1984 that benefits from a great title. The painting by itself shows one side of the story: Native American riders have stumbled upon a broken wagon full of metal tools and various supplies. One warrior raises his haul, a new mining pan glistening in the sunlight, while another picks through the odd assortment of objects in the wagon. The title, The Abandoned Dream reveals the other side of the story: miners passing over a rutted road have broken a wagon wheel. They can risk their safety and wait for someone to pass by to render help, or they can unhitch their wagon and head to safety with what they can carry, leaving everything else behind. Lovell’s use of “abandoned” conveys the sorrow and heartache that came to some of the unlucky pioneers of the Old West. And yet “abandoned dream” could also describe the treasure discovered by the Native American figures.
The Abandoned Dream is also a great example of Lovell’s fair portrayal of Indigenous people. Some artists from his time, especially some of the pulp illustrators, were prone to exploitive depictions of Native Americans that perpetuated cruel stereotypes and false histories. From an early age, Lovell was sympathetic to Native peoples. Famously, as the valedictorian of his high school class, he was invited to speak to his fellow graduates and their parents. He used the occasion for a speech titled “The Ill-treatment of the American Indian by the U.S. Government.“ He later admitted, "In retrospect, I wonder how 300 hapless parents felt being scolded by a 16-year-old on an otherwise cheerful occasion." Over the course of his long career, Lovell created hundreds of images of Native Americans that exemplified their culture, traditions, curiosity, strength and their long fight for survival during perilous times.
16 x 22 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $30,000 - 40,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
8 x 18 inches
Signed lower left; Signed verso
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
Tom Lovell 1909-1997
354
Kyle Polzin b. 1974
Cowboy’s Tools of the Trade Oil on canvas
355
Kyle Polzin b. 1974 Gathering Dust Oil on canvas
356
36 x 40 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
I chose the elements and textures in this painting to honor the strength and character of Indigenous nations across the Great Plains. The sacred pipe is adorned with ribbons and eagle feathers to represent a connection to a higher spiritual power, while the dyed wool trade cloth carries a rich cultural significance. The ledger drawing captures a moment in history, preserving both the legacy of respect and the importance of honoring the past. -Kyle Polzin
Kyle Polzin b. 1974
Path of Honor Oil on canvas
357
Howard Terpning b. 1927
Daughters of the Chief Oil on canvas
36 x 24 inches
Signed/CA and dated 1999 lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $200,000 - 300,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
Literature:
Howard Terpning: Spirit of the Plains People, Don Hedgpeth, The Greenwich Workshop, Shelton, CT, 2001: p. 88
Howard Terpning’s action scenes and large groupings of figures are some of the most treasured in Western art, but the Arizona artist also painted numerous images of quieter scenes, including images of women and children. In Daughters of the Chief, Terpning focuses on two sisters who embrace in a reverent moment. The artist abstracted the background so viewers would be drawn instantly to the delicate faces. Terpning is often called the best painter of faces, a distinction that began in his illustration days in New York when he painted Hollywood stars for movie posters.
In Daughters of the Chief, the artist hints at a Comanche custom that was in the girls’ futures. “The Comanche People practiced polygyny, with men often marrying two or more sisters. Sisters would usually get along better together than wives from different families,” the artist writes in Howard Terpning: Spirit of the Plains People. “It was the wives who prepared the hides of buffalo killed by their husband. Buffalo hides were the Comanche’s medium of exchange in the trade for guns and whiskey with the Mexican renegades called Comancheros. The more wives a Comanche man had, the more he would have to trade. Comanche women were married young, and these two daughters of a chief would have been a matrimonial coup for any Comanche warrior.”
358
Howard Terpning b. 1927
Leading the War Party Oil on canvas
20 x 24 inches
Signed and dated 77 lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $125,000 - 175,000
Provenance: Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2008
Private collection, California
Howard Terpning was a major force in illustration on the East Coast throughout the 1950s, 1960s and into the 1970s. He dropped it all in 1974 when he moved from Connecticut to Tucson, Arizona, to pursue easel painting. His entire second career was made in less than five years—from 1974, when he moved to Tucson, to 1979, when he was inducted into the Cowboy Artists of America. Those crucial years set the stage for the unprecedented career that followed. Leading the War Party, painted in 1977, arrived during that consequential period as the artist was still getting his footing in a new art world. And though it came early from Arizona studio, the painting contains many of the iconic qualities from the artist, including magnificent action, bold light and color, and effortless-looking brushwork that packs in both detail and emotion without overfilling the painting.
15 x 13 inches
Signed/CA and dated 2009 lower right
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Louisiana
359
Howard Terpning b. 1927
Apache Oil on board
360 Howard Terpning b. 1927 Making a Stand Oil on canvas
24 x 40 inches
Signed and dated 76 lower left
Estimate: $250,000 - 350,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
Created in 1976, at the very beginning of his career as a fine artist, Howard Terpning’s Making a Stand reveals the artist’s masterful way of painting light. “Light source and mood dictate color,” the artist explains in Terpning: Tribute to the Plains People. “Early morning and late afternoon light affect hues greatly. With everything, pine trees and grass, rivers and mountains, people and horses, we key to warms and cools.” Painter Harley Brown, author of Terpning, illuminates further: “Howard’s eye guides him, and the focus of the work confirms to him where the color should be. Nothing jumps all over the place. He subordinates some colors in order to pull the eye where he wants it. From experience he’s learned just how much accent to put on a given area. ‘Not too much flash. With color, there’s often trial and error, but definitely no painting by formula,ʼ [Terpning says]. ‘Whatever it is, a rock, a horse’s head, buckskin, it must be painted as though it has never been painted before. We can’t rely on a painting we did in the past. Each painting is a brand-new experience.’”
361
Ogden Pleissner 1905-1983
Afternoon Hunt
Watercolor
18 x 28 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Missouri
The common phrase “the thrill of the hunt” could be used to describe the work of Ogden Pleissner, but often an altered phrase, “the peace of the hunt,” could easily apply to his delicate watercolors. That is the case here as two men walk through thick vegetation at the edge of a clearing. Their prey could easily dart from the heavy foliage, which does produce some narrative tension, but the calming nature of the scene and the beauty of the land sets a softer tone. These classic sporting scenes, from one of the sporting masters, speak to the long history of sportsmen in America.
Pleissner was born far from these scenes, in Brooklyn, New York. He developed a love for the “out-of-doors” after spending time at a boy’s camp in Dubois, Wyoming, where he developed a fascination for adventure in the wilds of nature. He studied at the Art Students League in New York, and not long after switched primarily to watercolor as his preferred medium. In 1932, at the age of 27, Pleissner became the youngest artist (at that time) whose works were in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After the outbreak of World War II, he painted pictures for the Air Force and Life magazine, and later depicted D-Day and other historical events from the war. Although he’s known as a sporting artist in North America, across the Atlantic Ocean he was known for his European landscapes. Today his works are in countless museums on both continents.
362
Philip R. Goodwin 1882-1935
The Northwood King-Calling the Moose Oil on canvas
25 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $375,000 - 475,000
Provenance:
Kennedy Galleries, New York, NY, ca. 1968
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Reno, NV, 2006
Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2008
Christie’s, New York, NY, 2015
Private collection, Wyoming
Exhibitions:
Recapturing the Real West: Collections of William I. Koch, The Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, February 4-April 15, 2012
Literature:
Philip R. Goodwin: America’s Sporting & Wildlife Artist, Larry Len Peterson, Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Hayden, ID, 2001: p. 312
American Sports and Sportsmen, Kennedy Galleries, New York, NY, 1968: p. 11
Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art, edited by Kevin Sharp, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 2016: p. xiv-1, 81
This lot is accompanied by a copy of the book Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art
363
Robert Abbett 1926-2015
New Preston Falls Oil on board
20 x 30 inches
Signed lower left; Signed, titled and dated 1995 verso
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Oklahoma
364
Lynn Bogue Hunt 1878-1960
Duck Hunters Oil on canvas
18 x 22 inches
Signed and dated 1949 lower right
Estimate: $7,000 - 10,000
Although not as famous as his contemporary Philip R. Goodwin, Lynn Bogue Hunt may have been one of the most viewed and prolific sporting artists of the 20th century. His work included illustrations in more than 40 books, hundreds of commissions that were widely seen and exhibited, and more than 250 magazine covers, including 106 during a 54year period with Sports Afield. Hunt’s work was also used in 1939 for the sixth Federal Duck Stamp, which helps the federal government acquire wetlands for bird conservation, a cause Hunt championed throughout much of his life. Although Hunt painted many subjects—including marine scenes, cowboys and bird dogs—it is his birds that continue to captivate audiences.
365
Tucker Smith b. 1940
Untitled (Moose) Oil on board
9 x 12 inches
Signed and dated 15 lower left
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
366
Tucker Smith b. 1940
Drift Fence Study 2 Oil on canvas
20 x 18 inches
Signed and dated 07 lower left
Estimate: $18,000 - 28,000
Provenance: Private collection, Wisconsin
367
Wilson Hurley 1924-2008
A Full Moon at Sunrise on Mount Taylor Oil on board
36 x 60 inches
Signed lower left; Signed verso
Estimate: $25,000 - 45,000
Provenance:
Leanin’ Tree Museum of Western Art, Boulder, CO Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2018 Private collection, Oregon
Literature:
The Story of Leanin’ Tree: Art Enterprise in the American West, Don Hedgepeth and Ed Trumble, Leanin’ Tree Inc, Boulder, CO, 2008: p. 333
A Full Moon at Sunrise on Mount Taylor hung for many years at the now closed Leanin’ Tree Museum of Western Art in Boulder, Colorado. In his book on the collection, Leanin’ Tree founder Ed Trumble shared personal stories about the artworks: “Wilson told me of the inspiration for this unique scene: ‘At dawn on the 25th of March, I watched as the full moon set behind Mt. Taylor, 80 miles to the west. As the morning sun crept over the hills behind me, the snowy ridges of the mountain emerged, and the desert floor was suddenly washed with oranges, pinks, and blues, just as you see them in the painting.”
368
John Ford Clymer 1907-1989
So it’s off to Grandma’s for Turkey Day— oh, boy!, The Saturday Evening Post cover
Oil on board
33 ½ x 26 ¼ inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Arizona
Literature:
Saturday Evening Post, cover, November 26, 1955
This lot is accompanied by a copy of the November 26, 1955, edition of the Saturday Evening Post
Appearing on a 1955 cover of Saturday Evening Post, John Clymer’s Farm Scene arrived at a peak period for the magazine, which also saw 1955 covers by Norman Rockwell, Stevan Dohanos, Richard Sargent, John Falter and George Hughes. It was the sixth and final cover Clymer created for the magazine that year, with more than 80 in total throughout his career.
The description of the painting, included on the table of contents page, speaks to the quaint charm of the publication: “So it’s off to Grandma’s for Turkey Day—oh, boy! According to old pictures and mellow memories, part of this enchantment was bundling into a sleigh and dashing away behind jingling horses in a foot of snow; but nowadays it’s a dashing motorcar, and something seems to have happened to the snow, all of which is not without charm either. If this remark brings on an old-fashioned winter, Grandpa can plow out the lane with his charming tractor. Anyway, grandparents and grandyoungsters, corn shocks, barnyards and an exquisite aroma drifting from an old kitchen—these belong to each other this thankful time of year, and the enchantment is forever new. Speaking of aroma, that’s a symbolic turkey John Clymer painted; the real one is indoors aromaing.”
More than a decade after this piece was painted, Clymer moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he began his fine art career and cemented his status within the American West.
369
Eanger Irving Couse 1866-1936
Taos Pueblo Moonlight Oil on board
8 ¾ x 11 ¾ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $25,000 - 45,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Nevada
370
Eanger Irving Couse 1866-1936
Moonlit Spring Oil on board
9 x 12 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
Provenance:
Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2006
Private collection, California
Although several of the Taos Society of Artists painted nocturnes, none were as active in the genre as Eanger Irving Couse, who painted dozens of scenes bathed in blue moonlight. During a 1974 exhibition of Couse’s works, Harold McCracken acknowledged that the artist transcended his art form. “Eanger Irving Couse as an artist can probably best be described as a poet with paint brushes rather than pencils or a typewriter…The Indian paintings Couse put on canvas have the distinctiveness which is the hallmark of a great artist. It does not take any great amount of expertise to recognize a Couse picture, even at a considerable distance and without looking at the signature.”
371
Eanger Irving Couse 1866-1936
Offering to the Great Spirit Oil on canvas
35 x 46 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $400,000 - 600,000
Provenance:
Biltmore Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona
Private collection, Missouri
Literature:
Visions of the West: American Art from Dallas Private Collections, Rick Stewart, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, 1986: p. 38
Exhibitions:
Visions of the West: American Art from Dallas Private Collections, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, 1986
Exceptionally composed and meticulously arranged, Eanger Irving Couse’s Offering to the Great Spirit is a rare and unique work among the artist’s 1,500 catalogued paintings. Not only is the figure presented facing the viewer, an extraordinary deviation from Couse’s more common side profiles of figures, but the painting is also almost perfectly symmetrical with only the pipe bowl and several small details that are exclusive to one side of the painting. The CouseSharp Historic Site has catalogued the painting, completed in 1922, with the title Pipe Ceremony, and lists alternate titles as The Sacred Pipe and An Offering to the Great Spirit
372
Laverne Nelson Black 1887-1938
Taos Winter Morning
Oil on board
14 ½ x 18 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance:
Private collection
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, 1985
Collection of Rollin W. King, Dallas, TX, 1985
Santa Fe Art Auction, Santa Fe, NM, 2015
Santa Fe Art Auction, Santa Fe, NM, 2016
Private collection, Nevada
Although it is not obvious by this painting, Lavern Nelson Black sought out the Southwest after a medical diagnosis encouraged him to live in a drier and warmer climate. The Midwest artist, raised in Wisconsin and Illinois, had previously been West on assignment for Chicago newspapers, so when he was told he needed dry air he knew which direction to head. By 1925, Black was in Taos, New Mexico, and he was painting the Taos Pueblo, its people and the surrounding landscape. Many of his paintings were purchased by the Santa Fe Railroad to advertise the culture and beauty of the American West, which, in turn, helped establish the mythic qualities of the Southwest to East Coasters. Black also worked in Phoenix, where he completed murals with Oscar E. Berninghaus.
In Taos Winter Morning, Black’s strengths as an artist are on full view: loose brushwork paired with areas applied with a palette knife, a modernist sense of design and composition, and a complex arrangement of figures and horses. Black frequently painted from life, and this painting conveys a great deal of the active and energetic brushwork in his outdoor paintings. One small and noteworthy detail in this work is the small dog painted at the horse’s feet. In many of Black’s most famous paintings, dogs are painted within the scenery or in the clamber of movement and life in the Taos Pueblo.
373
Leon Gaspard 1882-1964
Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Oil on board
10 ½ x 12 inches
Signed and dated 1911 lower right
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance:
Dorotheum, Vienna, Austria, 2017
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Reno, NV, 2019
Private collection, Arizona
Painted in 1911 after the artist had taken his wife on a two-year honeymoon to Russia, including Siberia, Leon Gaspard’s Nizhny Novgorod, Russia is an important early work from the artist who later joined the art colony in Taos, New Mexico. Nizhny Novgorod is today the sixth-largest city in Russia. The bridge in the painting no longer exists, but it likely crossed the Oka or Volga rivers, which converge north of the city’s center. Although early in his career, the painting exhibits one of the artist’s most popular compositions: subjects walking diagonally through the painting on country road, forest trail or snowpacked street.
374
Leon Gaspard 1882-1964
Up
Twinning Canyon
Pastel
6 ¾ x 5 ¾ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $3,000 - 5,000
375
Leon Gaspard 1882-1964
Untitled Oil on board
7 x 10 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $3,000 - 5,000
376
Leon Gaspard 1882-1964 Market
Oil on linen mounted to board
4 x 6 ¾ inches
Signed lower left; “Peasants & Harnessed Horses and Wagons” verso
Estimate: $5,000 - 8,000
Signed and dated 1902 lower right
Estimate: $900,000 - 1,200,000
377
Henry Farny 1847-1916
Nomads Oil on canvas
22 x 40 inches
377 Henry Farny 1847-1916
Nomads (detail)
Oil on canvas
22 x 40 inches
Signed and dated 1902 lower right
Estimate: $900,000 - 1,200,000
Provenance:
Sotheby's circa 1981
JN Bartfield Galleries, New York, New York Private collection, Wyoming
Exhibitions:
Whitney Gallery of Western Art Cody, WY, 1983
In a letter dated May 3, 1902, (a letter that accompanies this lot) Henry Farny writes to Nomads first owner with warmth and appreciation: “I have this day shipped by express the picture Nomads to your address and trust the same will arrive in good shape and be satisfactory— personally it pleases me—as one of the most sincere things I have perpetrated in this vale of tears. But pictures are essentially ‘affaires de gout’—one man likes a color scheme, another wants a crass recitative of facts. I had Loring Andrews and one or two other people of good taste see it—and their comments were of a most agreeable nature to the self esteem of the painter. Your uncle Lars came to see it almost daily whilst it was under way. I hope some day when you are in Washington to bring President Roosevelt and Gen. Miles (not on the same day) to see it as they are both fond of my western pictures—and this one is very much the character of the country where the President had his ranch—I shall send him a photograph of it.”
Farny ends the letter with the lightest of sales pitches: “Should you decide not to take the picture please advise me at once—should it on the (other) hand please you—the price is $1,500.00.”
By 1902, Farny was deep into his art career, having garnered respect from collectors, artists and, as evidenced by his Nomads letter, presidents and military figures with whom he shared a love for the people and stories of the frontier. But Farny largely missed the version of the West that George Catlin and Karl Bodmer had seen decades earlier. When Farny took his first trip West to the Missouri River, in an area that would become North Dakota, and to the nearby Standing Rock Agency, he found that Native Americans were limited in almost every conceivable way of life—in movement, in land, and even in food, which was controlled by “government ration house.” This first trip was in 1881 and it came to define his experience with Indigenous people still barely a generation removed from the freedoms they had before confined to reservations. “The golden West isn’t what it used to be,” Farny lamented.
These early experiences are reflected in many of Farny’s work, including Nomads, which hints at the beauty of its subjects and their lands, and yet also depicts the difficult road ahead for them in the 20th century. For Farny’s subjects, there were no easy paths forward. “By the time he observed Native Americans, the majority of them were living on reservations, that is, public lands set aside by the federal government for enforced Indian occupation,” writes Julie Schimmel in Henry Farny Paints the Far West. “It is this historical context that trumps all previous discussions of Farny’s work as simply realistic. Much more routinely and obviously, a significant portion of Farny’s work evokes a sense of isolation and stasis, qualities that indirectly suggest, but do not literally portray, the dislocation of Plains Indians to lands they had not chosen for themselves.”
Showing an unidentified family traveling through a snowy field—a mother carrying a child, dogs marching alongside horses, a travois carrying meager belongings—Nomads speaks to the roving culture of the Plains People, and also hints at their plight as they march forward without a home. The bottom quarter of the painting is almost all limbs and sticks cutting clean silhouettes though fresh snow, while a gloomy sky fills the top half of the image; a line of bare trees cuts through the middle. The silence and the coldness of the scene vibrates from the canvas, creating a remarkably realistic image that calls out to Farny’s feelings about the West and its Native inhabitants.
378
Maynard Dixon 1875-1946
Heap Good Christmas You Pen & Ink
5 ¾ x 4 ½ inches
Initialed lower right; Christmas Card to CM Russell (according to Abe Hays)
Estimate: $3,000 - 5,000
Provenance: A.P. Hays Collection
379
Charles M. Russell 1864-1926
Tell’um You Heap Good Christmas Mixed Media
5 ½ x 4 inches
Signed lower right; Christmas card to Maynard Dixon (According to Abe Hays)
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance:
Santa Fe Art Auction, Santa Fe, NM, 1999
A.P. Hays Collection
Literature:
Paper Talk: Charlie Russell’s American West, Brian W. Dippie, Knopf, New York, NY, 1979: p. 111
Charles M. Russell: The Artist in his Heyday, Gerald Peters, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, 1995: p 185
Charles M. Russell, one of the most famous letter writers in the West, was fond of sending Christmas greetings to friends, many with small drawings or watercolors. The letters reveal a sentimental artist who marked the end of the year with reflection and pause. Here, in what might be his most famous Christmas card, Russell keeps it short and sweet with a bit of humor.
380 Frank Tenney Johnson 1874-1939
Rattlesnake Pete
Oil on canvas
28 x 20 ½ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance: Private collection, New York
Born and raised in the Midwest, but trained professionally in New York City, Frank Tenney Johnson first went West in 1904 as part of an illustration assignment for Field & Stream. The trip would set the course of the rest of his career. “Johnson’s success as an easel painter of the ‘wide open spaces’ resulted from his studies, his location in New York and Los Angeles, his passion for his subject, and his determined perseverance,” writes Melissa J. Webster in Frank Tenney Johnson and the American West. “He steadfastly devoted his life to becoming a painter, and he succeeded. Although Johnson did not practice the Munich style or American or French Impressionism, he was influenced by these innovative modes of expression as interpreted by [John Henry] Twachtman, [William Merritt] Chase, [Robert] Henri, and others, as well as by [Maxfield] Parrish’s color and [Frederic] Remington’s nocturnes. But Johnson developed his masterful style out of these artistic elements, creating a romanticized realism with the unwavering purpose to record for future generations our Western heritage.”
381
Charles Schreyvogel 1861-1912
The Last Drop
Bronze, cast No 134 12 inches overall height
Signed Copyrighted 1903 by Chas Schreyvogel in bronze; Roman Bronze Works N.Y.
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Provenance:
Private collection, New York
Literature:
The Life and Art of Charles Schreyvogel, by James D. Horan, Crown Publishers Inc., New York, 1969: Gravure Prints, p. 39
Made famous by Lon Megargee’s painting that has appeared inside Stetson hats for more than a century, the image of a lone cowboy giving his horse a drink from his hat originated with Charles Schreyvogel, first with a painting titled The Last Drop in 1899. During the process of creating the oil painting, the artist used clay to explore the form of his kneeling figure. What started as a clay study eventually turned into a fully realized work that was first cast in 1903. It was one of the artist’s most popular pieces, with more than 150 authorized casts.
382
Charles Schreyvogel 1861-1912
On the Skirmish Line Oil on canvas
16 ¼ x 20 ¼ inches
Signed and “ANA” dated 1904 lower left
Estimate: $150,000 - 250,000
Provenance: Private collection, Colorado
Literature:
The Life and Art of Charles Schreyvogel, by James D. Horan, Crown Publishers Inc., New York, 1969: Platinum Prints, p. 3
A copy of this book to accompany this lot.
One of the great action painters of the American West, Charles Schreyvogel missed much of the action of the Old West, but an 1890s trip to the Ute Reservation gave him many opportunities to talk to the fighters on both sides—the American troopers and the Native American fighters. “Schreyvogel’s obsession for detail and historical accuracy never flagged,” wrote James D. Horan in The Life and Art of Charles Schreyvogel. “He met many officers and cavalrymen who had taken part in the Plains wars, and he listened enthralled to their memories of the days only a few decades past when the tribes were shrewd and powerful foes. He also talked to Indian veterans of the wars, using the laborious sign language and his homemade dictionary. He was not content with stories—sometimes full blown. He demanded details. What did the troopers wear? What color were their trousers? What type revolvers did they carry? What were the size and thickness of the stirrup leathers, the type of headdress worn by the chiefs? Were the feathers eagle or hawk? Were their ponies painted for war with the tails bobbed?”
383
Victor Higgins 1884-1949
Indian Madonna
Oil on paper
18 x 10 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance:
Zaplin-Lampert Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Turner Auctions & Appraisals, San Francisco, CA, 2019
Private collection, Texas
Prior to a pivotal trip to Taos, New Mexico, Victor Higgins was in New York City, where he met and briefly studied under painter Robert Henri. Not long after he went to Europe to study in Paris and Munich. When he returned to New York, he was able to catch the Armory Show of 1913, particularly the work of Marsden Hartley. Henri, Europe and Hartley made Higgins realize he was dissatisfied with traditional art. He was in Taos in 1914 (with Walter Ufer), and the timing couldn’t have been more significant. The light and space in New Mexico unlocked all that was brewing in the artist. He would go on to become one of the more modern painters in the Taos Society of Artists.
384
Joseph Henry Sharp 1859-1953
Cheyenne Camp Oil on canvas
25 x 30 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $175,000 - 275,000
Literature:
Teepee Smoke: A New Look Into the Life and Work of Joseph Henry Sharp, Forrest Fenn, One Horse Land & Cattle Co., Santa Fe, NM, 2007: p. 39
Provenance:
Kirk Family (Kirk Trading Post, Gallup, NM), circa 1943 Ed and Carol Stanke, Santa Fe, NM, by descent Forrest and Peggy Fenn, circa 2002 From above by descent
Originally sold in 1943 (for $400) by the artist to the family that owned the Kirk Trading Post in Gallup, New Mexico, Joseph Henry Sharp’s Cheyenne Camp is a remarkable example from his winter sojourns to the Crow Agency in Montana. Sharp had set up a year-round studio in Montana, dubbed Absarokee Hut, but spent most winters in Montana and summers in Taos. Asked why he spent cold months in a climate known for its frigid temperatures and summers in a desert town sweltering in the heat, Sharp’s explanation was based on his ability to get models: “At this season of the year [winter], the Indians [at Crow Agency] have more time for posing—which they are induced to do for a consideration of two dollars a sitting—and the snowy landscape, sage brush foothills, and winter foliage along the Little Big Horn River are more paintable.”
“The ability to live on the reservation year-round opened up new possibilities for the artist. Sharp was able to paint during the winter, producing landscapes with the subdued tonalities of gray skies and the softening effect of snow blanketing the natural forms. It also gave him more occasions for portraying traditional patterns of Indian life,” writes Sarah Boehme in The Life and Art of Joseph Henry Sharp. “He wrote of expanding his subject matter beyond portraiture: ‘Now that I have more time, I shall devote much of it to composition & pictures of the poetry & legends as well as the home life of the Indians at present!’”
385
Charles M. Russell 1864-1926
Navajo Wild Horse Hunters
Watercolor and gouache on paper
13 ½ x 18 ½ inches
Signed with skull and dated 1919 lower left; “Thomas N Jamieson III on his first birthday March 28 1922” written on front
Estimate: $300,000 - 500,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Colorado
Literature:
Romance Maker: The Watercolors of Charles M. Russell, Rick Stewart, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX, 2011: p. 384
Charles M. Russell: A Catalogue Raisonné, B. Byron Price, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 2007: p. 253
In 1916, Charlie and Nancy Russell traveled south to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon and the lands of the Diné and Hopi people. The six-week adventure, much of it recorded in photographs, had an immense impact on the couple. Nancy later wrote, “This trip has been a trip of memories.” For Charlie, the trip was transformative. The Arizona trip would inspire a cluster of important Navajo paintings, including Navajo Wild Horse Hunters, which was painted in 1919, but dedicated in 1922 to “Thomas N. Jamieson III on his first birthday.” In Romance Maker: The Watercolors of Charles M. Russell, author Rick Stewart notes about the painting: “The overall technique, like other watercolors of the period, is predominately the use of opaque colors laid on in an additive process, with highlights—mostly varying degrees of white or a bright, purplish blue—put on last. During his trip to Arizona Russell probably saw a few displays of Navajo horsemanship, but even if he didn't, it would have been comparatively easy for him to transpose a Navajo wrangler for a Montana one in his depiction.”
Russell continued to paint Navajo riders for several years, and then again in the last year of his life.
386
Charles M. Russell 1864-1926
Center Fire Man on a Bronc Pen & Ink with Watercolor 10 x 7 ¼ inches
Signed lower right with skull
Estimate: $135,000 - 185,000
Provenance:
Frederic G. and Ginger K. Renner, Scottsdale, Arizona
The Russell, Great Falls, MT, 2012 Private collection, Arizona
Exhibitions:
Charles M. Russell: The Frederic G. Renner Collection, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; 1981.
Literature:
Recreation, “Recreation Men IV—C.M. Russell, the Cowboy Artist,” Edward Cave, July 1917: p. 13, line engraving.
Charles Russell: American Artist, Janice K. Broderick, Jefferson National Expansion Historical Association, St. Louis, MO, 1982: p. 70
When the Library of Congress started diligently cataloging Western material in the 20th century, it needed a glossary of terms to help researchers with some of the cowboy vernacular. Words and phrases included in the glossary were “ditty bag” (a pouch for personal items in the bunkhouse), “leppy” (an orphaned calf) and “wrango” (a ranch hand charged with caring for the horses).
Another term that the Library of Congress catalogued was “center-fire saddle,” which might give some insight into this Russell watercolor: “[A center-fire saddle] is saddle with a single cinch rigged at the midpoint between the fork and the cantle. The cinch on 18th-century Mexican saddles hung directly below the saddle forks but the design changed as it moved north. In his book Trail Dust and Saddle Leather, writer Jo Mora reports that vaqueros in Spanish California ‘moved the cinch ring back and hung it at the middle of the [saddle] tree, but still held to one cinch only. This was called the California or center-fire style. Then, a little later, they commenced certain variations in the exact hang of this single cinch, moving it forward a trifle. So now we have the center fire, the 5/8, the 3/4 and the 7/8 rig.’ Mora contrasts the center-fire design with the two-cinch rig favored by cowboys who tie ropes to the saddle horn: ‘For the hard and fast roper the double rig is the only thing; and the single cinch for the dally man.’”
387
Joseph Henry Sharp 1859-1953
Wind River Country - Wyo Oil on canvas
20 x 27 inches
Signed lower right; Titled verso
Estimate: $150,000 - 250,000
Provenance: The artist Closson’s Gallery, Cincinnati, OH Private collection, Ohio Private collection, Wyoming
Joseph Henry Sharp’s legacy is thoroughly anchored in Northern New Mexico, where his Taos studio still draws visitors who pilgrimage to see the famous locations of the Taos Society of Artists. And yet key trips to Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota were just as influential on Sharp, who was driven by his need to see Native Americans on their own lands. For Wind River Country – Wyo, Sharp paints the Shoshone people in a magnificent winter scene. The piece, marked for sale at $450 in a note on the back, likely originated from Sharp’s stay on the Crow Agency in Montana. “Of Sharp’s painting locales, Crow Agency is the one that most enhanced his reputation as an ‘Indian painter.’ Crow Agency served as a home base from which to seek out the surviving warriors in the neighboring Indian agencies of the Blackfeet, Sioux, Cheyennes, Shoshones, and Arapahos,” writes Marie Watkins in The Life & Art of Joseph Henry Sharp. “This meant traveling by stage or wagon 50 to 150 miles to remote places where he…would spend weeks at a time. Determined to paint as many Plains Indians as he could, he declared that he would paint all the ‘old fighters’ whom death didn’t take first.”
388
Frank Tenney Johnson 1874-1939
A Lone Rider Oil on canvas
24 x 18 inches
Signed and dated 1935 lower left; Signed/AHA, titled and dated 1935 verso
Estimate: $225,000 - 300,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Oakland, CA, 1936
By descent, Oakland, CA
Private collection, Texas
Exhibited:
Ninth Annual State-Wide Exhibition, California, 1935
Twenty-Sixth Annual Exhibition, Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, Los Angeles, CA, 1935
New Year’s Eve Beaux-Arts Ball, California Art Club, 1935
Frank Tenney Johnson’s Lone Rider is a classic example of the artist’s nocturne canyon paintings, a sub-genre that Johnson essentially invented in the early 20th century after a pivotal trip through Hayden, Colorado, in 1904. Broke and low on travel supplies, Johnson had to wire for more money to continue his journey. While he waited, he sketched and painted from morning and well into dusk. His letters home during this period reveal he was trying new techniques with moonlight, shadows and his palette. “I’ve been experimenting with colors, the way Maxfield Parrish gets his peculiar techniques,” he wrote, “It’s an attractive effect indeed and I’ll make good use of it.” Eleven days later, his money arrived and the journey continued, but Johnson would never truly escape from Hayden and the mysteries he unlocked there. He would carry them with him for the rest of his career.
Lone Rider, sometimes referred to as A Lone Rider Alhambra, was painted in 1935 when Johnson was living on Champion Place in Alhambra, California. Champion Place would come to be known as Artist’s Alley because of the many notable artists who called it home: Norman Rockwell, Victor Clyde Forsythe, Eli Harvey, Jack Wilkinson Smith and others.
389
Oscar Berninghaus 1874-1952
Among the Adobes-Taos Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Signed Taos, NM lower right
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Provenance:
The Russell, Great Falls, Montana, 2015
Private collection, New Mexico
Oscar E. Berninghaus was prone to grandness in many of his Western paintings. These works were epic in scope, with many figures amid complex compositions that told larger-than-life stories. And yet Berninghaus seemed most at ease with his quieter, slice-of-life moments in Northern New Mexico. Subjects included horses tied to hitching posts on empty streets, images of pueblo houses surrounded by cottonwoods and haciendas framed by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Among the Adobes-Taos exemplifies these quiet and magnificent paintings from one of the Taos greats.
390
Oscar Berninghaus 1874-1952
Apache Indians at Boulder Gouache
15 ¾ x 20 inches
Signed lower left;
Signed “Taos N. Mex” verso
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance:
Collection of Anne Tandy
Private Collection, New Mexico, 1990
Collection of Kathleen and Gerald Peters, Santa Fe, NM
Santa Fe Art Auction, Santa Fe, NM, 2016
Private collection, Nevada
Literature:
Masters of the Taos Tradition, C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT, 1993: p. 7
Exhibitions:
Masters of the Taos Tradition, C.M. Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT, 1993
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, CO
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA
National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, WY, 1993-1995
391
Oscar Berninghaus 1874-1952
The Edge of the Foothills Oil on canvas
24 ¼ x 30 ¼ inches
Signed “Taos NM” lower right
Estimate: $175,000 - 275,000
Provenance:
Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2005
Private collection, Missouri
Brightly painted and marvelously composed, Oscar E. Berninghaus’ The Edge of the Foothills captures one of the common themes of the great Taos painter’s works: quiet human moments framed against the grand majesty of nature. The painter, who road into Northern New Mexico strapped to the top of a train so he could see the land better, went to great lengths to capture the small details of his subjects’ lives while painting them within the larger tapestry of the Southwest. He also captured a people in transition with the land and nature, which is made abundantly clear in this painting, as the subjects stand in shadow as the vibrant valley spreads out below them.
“Some of the founding artists of Taos, like O.E. Berninghaus, saw and painted the Indian in transition. In their canvases one can see the influence of the advancing Western world. There might be a tourist with camera in hand, the Spanish cross, the wagon, Western clothing, schools and automobiles. They all saw and painted Taos differently—but they all painted Taos,” writes Gordon E. Sanders in Oscar E. Berninghaus: Master Painter of American Indians and the Frontier West. “Now they are all gone, these founding artists. And yet they all live, in the rich canvases that hang in the world’s great museums, galleries and private homes. They made Taos an art center and achieved greatness for themselves. They came to Taos, and Oscar Edmund Berninghaus was one of them.”
392
Joseph Henry Sharp 1859-1953
Indian Summer Oil on canvas
20 ¼ x 16 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $60,000 - 90,000
Provenance:
The Artist, Toas, New Mexico
Fenn Galleries, Ltd., Santa Fe, New Mexico
Thomas Nygard Inc., Bozeman, Montana
Private Collection, Montana
Letter of Authentication:
Forrest Fenn, author of Joseph Henry Sharp The Beat of the Drum, the Whoop of the Dance provided a Letter of Authentication dated March 11, 1999 for J.H. Sharp’s “Indian Summer,” which conveys with the painting, and is housed in an envelope on the foam core backing.
Certificate of Authentication:
Nedra Matteucci Galleries of Santa Fe, New Mexico provided a Certificate of Authentication for J.H. Sharp’s “Indian Summer,” which conveys with the painting, and is housed in an envelope on the foam core backing.
Joseph Henry Sharp made his first trip to the Crow Agency in Montana in the summer of 1899. By 1901 he elected to live on the Crow Agency, first at the Server Hotel and later in several studios, including his famous Absarokee Hut. The studio was built for year-round painting, but Sharp and his wife largely stuck to winters in Montana and summers in Taos, New Mexico. While Sharp is known as a Taoseño, possible the most famous resident of the town, his work from Montana includes some of his greatest masterpieces. Indian Summer, inspired by his trips to Montana, is not dated, but Forrest Fenn’s book on Sharp, Teepee Smoke, suggests it may have been painted between 1919 and 1921.
393
Joseph Henry Sharp 1859-1953
Governor’s Son Oil on canvas
18 ¼ x 24 ⅛ inches
Signed lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $60,000 - 90,000
Provenance:
The Russell, Great Falls, MT, 2023
Private collection, Colorado
Few places in the Southwest have been painted as thoroughly as the kiva fireplace inside the studio of Joseph Henry Sharp in Taos, New Mexico. The fireplace, the wall next to it and the round window with the square frame have featured prominently in dozens of Sharp’s paintings, including some of his masterpieces. The famous fireplace makes an appearance here in Governor’s Son, which shows a single figure, his back to the firelight as he holds a drum. Sharp had numerous studios, including the nearby Luna Chapel and also studios on the Crow Agency in Montana, but none are as identifiable as his main Taos studio, which is now part of the Couse-Sharp Historic Site in Taos. It was the fireplace and its soft glow that energized Sharp to paint indoors as he explored different ways of capturing light in paint. Marie Watkins, who writes an essay in The Life & Art of Joseph Henry Sharp, notes that Sharp was invigorated by these paintings. “With the element of light from fire, Sharp tapped into something primal, a dialogue between light and darkness that reached back to early humans who created and viewed cave paintings by firelight.”
394
Gerard Curtis Delano 1890-1972
The Canyon Dweller Oil on board
24 x 28 inches
Signed lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $75,000 - 125,000
Provenance: Private collection, New York
Literature:
Walking With Beauty: The Art and Life of Gerard Curtis Delano, Richard G. Bowman, Denver, CO, 1990: p. 87
The Canyon Dweller is a quintessential work by Gerard Curtis Delano, exhibiting his prominent use of color, the stylized depiction of the figure and the canyon setting amid the near-abstract forms of his landscapes. These images are some of the most iconic works of the Southwest. And they nearly never happened.
Throughout much of the 1930s, Delano homesteaded at Cataract Creek in Summit County, Colorado. He lived a primitive life, including cutting his own firewood and hauling water up from the creek in pails. During his leisure time, he painted illustrations and wrote text for his acclaimed series The Story of the West. At the conclusion of that series, which was well received but generated only limited funds, Delano faced a pivotal decision of what to do next. Faced with an unknown future, he went deep into the desert. “Always having had a great interest in Indians, I now drove to New Mexico and Arizona to get firsthand material. First stopping with some of the pueblo tribes, I then visited the Navajo Reservation,” Delano wrote in Walking With Beauty: The Art and Life of Gerard Curtis Delano. “And what I saw there I liked. Here was a beautiful, proud people who, in everyday life, dressed more colorfully than any other tribe of my knowledge. So began my knowledge of, and acquaintance with, the Navajo. As my admiration of these people has grown, so has the number of my material-gathering trips among them. Now, at the apex of my career, I was called the ‘Painter of the Navajo.’”
395
Cyrus Dallin 1861-1944
Appeal to the Great Spirit
Bronze, #76
21 ½ inches overall height
Signed C.E. Dallin 1913; Gorham Co. Founders QPN
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
396
Cyrus Dallin 1861-1944
The Scout Bronze, #3
23 ½ inches overall height
Signed C.E.D. 1910; Gorham Co. Founders Q488
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
Born to Mormon pioneers who crossed the frontier in search of religious freedom, Cyrus Dallin witnessed the twilight of the Wild West surrounded by Paiute and Ute Indians in Utah. Those formative experiences created a deep interest in Native American subjects, which would translate into his later work after leaving Utah to study art in Boston. In Massachusetts, and later in Paris, Dallin created large works of important figures, including Paul Revere and French general Marquis de Lafayette. But it is his Native American subjects that are considered his masterworks, including Appeal to the Great Spirit, considered by many to be one of the most iconic Western sculptures ever created.
397
Gerard Curtis Delano 1890-1972
The White Cloud Oil on board
24 x 28 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $35,000 - 55,000
Provenance:
Leanin’ Tree Museum of Western Art, Boulder, CO
Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2018
Private collection, Oregon
Literature:
The Story of Leanin’ Tree: Art Enterprise in the American West, Don Hedgepeth and Ed Trumble, Leanin’ Tree Inc, Boulder, CO, 2008: p. 223
The White Cloud is one of Delano’s popular canyon scenes. It is a classic example of the artist’s more modern-leaning paintings, which show both a figure and those giant forms that converge on a single fulcrum represented by the horse and rider. Prior to its closing in 2017, the Leanin’ Tree Museum of Western Art was the home to The White Cloud. The painting was the first Delano acquisition for the museum by its founder Ed Trumble. “Sometime in the late 1950s, determined to meet Colorado’s most famous artist, I made an appointment to see him in his studio. He quickly put me at ease with his courtesy and warmth. According to my notes from the visit, he talked mostly about himself and his paintings, which were hanging all over the walls of his studio,” Ed Trumble writes in The Story of Leanin’ Tree: Art Enterprise in the American West. “…Despite our vast age difference, Jerry and I enjoyed a warm friendship. In later years he would often call me and invite me to his studio, where he sat and painted while entertaining me with tales about his youth. Delano told me of his time at the Art Students League of New York, where he studied under such greats as N.C. Wyeth and Harvey Dunn. He often invited me to his apartment to visit with him and his wife, Blanche, who invariably served us cherry pie and coffee. On one such visit in 1967, I saw The White Cloud and in response to my humble inquiry he offered it at a price I could not begin to afford. Blanche calmly interrupted her husband to say, ‘Jerry dear, why don’t you sell it to him at a really good price?’ With a smile, he said, ‘Well, Ed, can you afford $450?’ Of course, I jumped at it, and The White Cloud became my first Delano acquisition.”
398
Gerard Curtis Delano 1890-1972
The Fur Traders Oil on canvas
32 x 42 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $250,000 - 350,000
398
Gerard Curtis Delano 1890-1972
The Fur Traders (detail)
Oil on canvas
32 x 42 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $250,000 - 350,000
Provenance:
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Reno, NV, 2013
Private collection, New York
Although he was primarily known for his Navajo scenes in canyons, Gerard Curtis Delano painted numerous works of figures in canoes. These range from warriors paddling into unseen danger to, as seen here, fur traders with their Indigenous escorts. Delano didn’t always name the tribes in these paintings, but they varied from Menominee and Ojibwe in the Great Lakes region to tribes on the Northwest Coast. Here, in Fur Traders, one possible tribe pictured is the Ojibwe people based on the style of birchbark canoe. The painting, one of the largest and most magnificent of Delano’s canoe works, is split horizontally down the middle as the image is repeated in the water’s reflection. This dual image allowed the artist to abstract and distort the figures, creating a unique interplay between the top and bottom of the painting. Adding to the surreal tone of the painting are the glass-like surface of the water and the misty fog that hangs in the background, which give the painting an almost dreamlike quality as the canoe and its reflection hang within Delano’s light paint.
399
Gerard Curtis Delano 1890-1972
Land of Magnificent Distances Oil on board
24 x 30 inches
Signed lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $30,000 - 50,000
Provenance:
Strong-Fox Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, 2004
Private collection, California
Gerard Curtis Delano was born in Massachusetts, the son of a sea captain. His family was so connected to the ocean that he was first named Gerard Tobey, after his father’s three-masted sailing ship. It was only later he was renamed Gerard Curtis after the ship’s owner. Delano could have easily lived his life on the sea, but an early interest in art propelled him toward drawing and painting, and then later into illustration, where he studied with Dean Cornwell, Harvey Dunn and N.C. Wyeth. A 1919 trip to a Colorado ranch profoundly altered his trajectory. He spent the next 50 years devoted to the West and its people. “Asked for my philosophy about my work, I say simply that I feel that I have been given a great talent in order to give beauty to the world,” Delano wrote in Walking With Beauty: The Art and Life of Gerard Curtis Delano. “I feel that that is my job, my directed mission in life; that I have been definitely inspired in my work by God; and that, in fact, I am but an open channel, a medium acting on ideas—‘messages’—from above.”
400 Grace Carpenter Hudson 1865-1937
The Mystic Symbol Oil on canvas
31 x 30 ½ inches
Signed and dated 07 lower right; Signed verso
Estimate: $25,000 - 45,000
Provenance: Private collection, Montana
Literature:
The Painter Lady: Grace Carpenter Hudson, Searles R. Boynton, Interface California Corp, 1978: p. 115
Created in 1907 by prominent California painter Grace Carpenter Hudson, The Mystic Symbol depicts two Pomo Indians, Mary Mitchell and Pete McClure, who are shown taking a break—Mary from basketmaking, and Pete from making wampum. In describing the painting, Hudson refers to the Quail Woman, a prominent figure in Pomo culture. “The Quail Woman who taught the Indians basketry bade them use certain symbols for her. She might come at any time and go from top to bottom of the basket and inspect the perfection of the work,” Hudson wrote. “The old folks tell the legend over and over to the young, urging them not to forget or neglect the principles of the beautiful Quail Woman and their ancestors. All designs on a Pomo basket have an opening in the design to allow the Quail Woman to enter the basket and inspect its quality.”
401
Julius Rolshoven 1858-1930
La Bajada Hill Oil on canvas
32 ½ x 26 inches
Signed lower right “Santa Fe”; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance: Private collection, Nevada
Painted with a visceral sense of action and drama, La Bajada Hill represents the raw power of Julius Rolshoven’s ability as a painter. Filled with vibrant color, a flurry of movement and explosive energy that pulses from the composition, the painting comes from the artist’s time in Taos, New Mexico, where he was an associate member of the Taos Society of Artists. Drawn to exotic locations around the world, Rolshoven—born in Detroit, but a student of Munich, Paris, Venice and Florence—experimented with many styles and movements, with works ranging from classical Europeanstyle portraits and Renaissance-like figures done using moody chiaroscuro to floral still lifes and domestic scenes set in interior spaces. The artist must have liked the composition of La Bajada Hill, because it’s one he repeats in Two Indians on Horseback, completed in an entirely different style and with pastels.
La Bajada Hill is a mesa located between Albuquerque and Santa Fe in New Mexico. The hill, which is a mile off the highway between the two cities, was the final challenge on the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro into Santa Fe. The trail, known as the Silver Route, connected Mexico City to Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo) north of Santa Fe. “By far, the mesa’s most defining feature is at its southwest edge, where the volcanic escarpment upon which the mesa sits towers 600 feet high over the plains below,” notes the National Park Service, which has preserved the site. “Appropriately known as La Bajada (The Descent), the overlook is one of New Mexico’s most spectacular natural landmarks. It provides an awesome perspective on the great lengths—and heights—that El Camino Real travelers trod on their epic journey.”
402
Frederic Remington 1861-1909
Thrust His Lance Through the Body and Rode
Him Down
Black and White oil on canvas
27 ½ x 19 ½ inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $100,000 - 150,000
Provenance:
Sold by the artist to William E. Booth, Toronto, Canada
Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, NY
Harrison Eiteljorg, Indianapolis, IN, 1970
Gifted to private collector, 1973
Christie’s, New York, NY, 2010
Private collection, Wyoming
Literature:
Harper’s Weekly, Harper & Brothers, New York, NY, December 7, 1889: p. 980
Frederic Remington: A Catalogue Raisonne, Volume I, Peter H. Hassrick and Melissa J. Webster, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY: p. 199
Frederic Remington: The American West, Philip R. St. Clair, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, 1978: p. 239
The Frederick Remington Book, Harold McCracken, Doubleday & Company Inc., Gardeb City, NY, 1966: p. 149
Created during an especially active period of Frederic Remington’s illustration career, Thrust His Lance Through the Body and Rode Him Down was painted for the December 7, 1889, edition of Harper’s Weekly. A woodcut engraving of the image appeared on a full page, accompanying Clarence Pullen’s story “Christmas at the Hacienda,” which tells the story of Don Francisco as he greets holiday guests at a mission near the Rio Grande when New Mexico was part Mexico. During the festivities, a band of Navajo warriors attacks the mission and Don Francisco is struck down in the battle. The image depicts the exact moment a Comanche rider enters the battle and rescues the wounded man at the horses’ feet.
The image, documented as No. 550 in the Remington catalogue raisonné, was part of a string of black-and-white paintings from the late 1880s the artist created for magazines such as Harper’s, St. Nicholas Magazine, Century Magazine, Scribner’s and many others. Although Remington was known for his masterpieces outside of illustration, it’s these pieces for popular magazines that define his work and establish him as an important painter of the American West.
Thomas Moran 1837-1926
On the Hance Trail-Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, Arizona
Thomas Moran was not just an artist painting the scenery of the American West. He was also a witness to history as many of his most famous subjects were discovered, explored, mapped and studied. Moran was a member of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 that explored the Yellowstone region; his paintings helped establish the National Park Service. He was one of the first artists to paint the Grand Tetons and Green River, both in Wyoming, and Zion Valley in Utah. For the Grand Canyon—as seen here in On the Hance Trail–Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, Arizona—Moran was part of a pivotal expedition led by John Wesley Powell in 1873. The trip so captivated the artist that he visited the canyon as often as he could, and by the early 20th century he was spending most winters in Northern Arizona. Primarily working in watercolor sketches, Moran returned to his New York City studio to create his larger oil paintings. These Grand Canyon pieces are some of the most iconic American works of art ever created and are today in major museum collections such as the Smithsonian, the Gilcrease Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and countless others.
For On the Hance Trail–Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, Arizona, painted in 1906, Moran focused his attention deeper into the canyon, seemingly far below the South Rim. The trail mentioned in the title is named after John Hance, who, after entering the canyon in 1883, became the first European American to settle at the Grand Canyon. “He originally built his trails for mining, but quickly determined the real money lay in work as a guide and hotel manager,” notes the National Park Service. “From the very start of his tourism business, with his Tennessee drawl, spontaneous wit, uninhibited imagination and ability to never repeat a tale in exactly the same way, he developed a reputation as an eccentric and highly entertaining storyteller.” Hance went on to carve several trails through the canyon, as well as improve the old Havasupai trail at the head of today’s Hance Creek drainage. His original trail, the Old Hance Trail, was prone to frequent washouts, so the New Hance Trail was built using some parts of the original route down. Today it is regarded as the most difficult trail at the canyon. Its technical difficulty prompted this review in 1904: “There may be men who can ride unconcernedly down Hance’s Trail, but I confess I am not one of them. My object in descending made it essential that I should live to tell the tale, and therefore, I mustered up sufficient moral courage to dismount and scramble down the steepest and most awful sections of the path on foot…’On foot,’ however, does not express it, but on heels and toes, on hands and knees, and sometimes in the posture assumed by children when they come bumping down the stairs.”
Interestingly, the Met in New York City has the watercolor painting The Grand Canyon: Head of the Old Hance Trail, which shows the steep vertical descent down into the canyon and the peril that may await hikers. On the Hance Trail–Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, Arizona, though, shows a more pleasing angle that exemplifies the canyon’s magnificence, unrivaled beauty and how light glows off the canyon walls. The idyllic setting with treacherous boulders and vertical drops also shows how Moran descended into the canyon to capture his most famous subject from new perspectives—very carefully.
403
Thomas Moran 1837-1926
On the Hance Trail-Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, Arizona Oil on canvas 14 ½ x 20 inches
Signed and dated 1906 lower left; Signed, titled and dated 1906 verso
Estimate: $750,000 - 1,000,000
Provenance:
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Reno, NV, 2006 Private collection, Wyoming
This work will be included in Stephen L. Good and Phyllis Braff’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné.
404
Edgar Payne 1883-1947
Grand Canyon Oil on canvas
20 x 24 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance:
Private collection, New Mexico
Bonhams, Los Angeles, CA, 2009
Private collection, California
Edgar Payne first saw the Southwest the same way many tourists from the East Coast experienced it: from a car on the Santa Fe Railway. The trip included a group of artists and was paid for by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, which was using painters to establish the myth of the Southwest. Stops along the journey included Gallup, New Mexico; Canyon de Chelly; Navajo and Hopi reservations; and ended at the El Tovar hotel at the Grand Canyon on October 15, 1916. It was that trip that laid the groundwork for Payne’s paintings of canyons, Navajos and the desert. “He returned to that glorious country nearly every year that he was in America the rest of his life,” his wife wrote after he died.
405
Birger Sandzen 1871-1954
Saline River, Russell, Kansas
Oil on board
25 x 30 inches
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and dated 1940 verso
Estimate: $45,000 - 65,000
Provenance:
Santa Fe Art Auction, Santa Fe, NM, 2014
Private collection, New Mexico
406
Albert Bierstadt 1830-1902
Rocky Mountain Sheep
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
13 ⅝ x 19 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $60,000 - 90,000
Provenance:
Trosby Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida
Mr. and Mrs. Lester Avnet, New York and Palm Beach circa 1971
Mrs. Grant William Breur, Englewood, Colorado
Private Collection, Wyoming
This work will be included in Melissa Webster Speidel’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné.
Beginning around 1876 and running through the 1880s, Albert Bierstadt painted a series of wildlife images showing elk, mountain sheep and mountain goats. The artist was drawn to a specific composition that he would repeat in numerous works. “In all these paintings, the animals are placed on rocky precipices; viewed from a low vantage point, placing them above the viewer; and silhouetted against a cloudy sky or darkened landscape. They are depicted as noble creatures in a vast wilderness terrain,” writes Melissa W. Speidel in Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West “…Paintings such as [these], in which the animals exude vigor and vitality, are a reflection of the artist’s own sense of well-being after his time in the Yellowstone wilderness.”
The work here, Rocky Mountain Sheep, is unique to many of the other pieces of this era, primarily because it includes so much of the landscape, which is given prominence alongside the strong form of the animal subject. The timing of these paintings, including this one, reflect Bierstadt’s growing concern about conservation and the role of wildlife within America’s wilderness.
36 x 36 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Indiana
24 x 24 inches
Signed lower right; Titled verso
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Indiana
407
Curt Walters b. 1950 Pueblos Oil on canvas
408
Curt Walters b. 1950
Januarius Oil on board
Signed lower right; Titled verso
Estimate: $35,000 - 50,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Indiana
409
Curt Walters b. 1950
Grand Canyon Oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches
410
Charles Nahl 1818-1878
Joaquin Murieta
Oil on board
18 x 24 inches
Signed and dated 1875 lower right
Estimate: $75,000 - 125,000
Provenance:
Bonhams, Los Angeles, CA, 1996
Private collection, Wyoming
Created in 1875, Charles Nahl’s Joaquín Murieta—sometimes titled Joaquín Murieta: The Vaque—depicts one of America’s most famous and notorious Western folk heroes. Although many versions of the story exist, the general myth held that Murieta was a vaquero from Mexico who traveled north to California to mine for gold sometime around 1850. A false accusation was made, possibly over a stolen burro, and Murieta and his family were brutalized, after which Murieta went on a murderous spree to get vengeance. A manhunt in 1853 claimed to have killed Murieta and several other bandits, but legends of his survival were quick to spread. Today, Joaquín Murieta is all but invisible to contemporary audiences, but during the late 1800s his story was known widely, as was his nickname, “The Robin Hood of the West.” Murieta’s Zorro-like myth spread quickly in 1854 after Cherokee writer John Rollin Ridge wrote the dime novel The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, which was the first novel published in California, the first novel published by a Native American, and the first American novel to feature a Mexican protagonist.
Like Murieta, Charles Nahl was lured to California (from Germany) by the gold rush of the 1840s. It was there, possibly near Sacramento, where Nahl likely first heard the Murieta story. The painter created as many as a dozen images of the folk hero, including Joaquín Murieta, which is likely his largest and most important painting of the Western figure.
411
George Henry Durrie 1820-1863
Twelve Miles To Goshen Oil on canvas
18 x 24 inches
Signed and dated Jan 1858 lower right
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance: Private collection Indiana
George Henry Durrie spent all 43 years of his life in Connecticut, which is where Twelve Miles to Goshen takes place. Goshen is a small village 35 miles from Hartford, Connecticut. Dated 1858, the work is an early American scene that highlights the beauty of the winter landscape, a style of painting that Durrie helped make popular in the mid-19th century. Durrie drew inspiration from the Hudson River School painters, but later added his own twist to the landscape genre when he included the snowy and icy conditions that were common during the winter months in Connecticut. Not only were the works a success, Durrie helped pioneer the genre of winter scenes. While his paintings were dismissed by art critics and curators, they were quite successful with collectors, including many who sought out commissions from the artist. Today his works are noteworthy for their quaint visions of small-town life during a time of year that is captured far less by other artists of the period.
“Almost all of his compositions are relatively small in scale, few exceeding 18 by 24 inches, and his views are quiet and intimate. He knew and admired the works of Thomas Cole, and may have tried to emulate certain aspects of Cole’s style, yet he eschewed the Hudson River School’s compositional complexity and expansiveness,” the National Gallery of Art notes. “Because his paintings combined extensive genre elements with landscape they had a story-telling content that made them pleasant, accessible images to the average viewer. The lithographic firm of Currier & Ives successfully reproduced 10 of Durrie’s scenes and these, in turn, became popular calendar illustrations in the 20th century. As a result, Durrie’s depictions of rural life in the mid-19th century are now among the most familiar images in all of American art…[H]owever, these printed pictures do not convey the keen sensitivity to and understanding of conditions of atmosphere and light that are so pronounced in Durrie’s paintings.”
412
Clark Hulings 1922-2011
Hot Springs Oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
Signed and dated 1982 lower right
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Texas
Literature:
Hulings: A Gallery of Paintings by Clark Hulings, Clark Hulings, White Burro Publishing, Santa Fe, NM, 1986: Plate 100
On the subject of this painting, the artist wrote in Hulings: A Gallery of Paintings by Clark Hulings: “One Christmas vacation we were driving around central Mexico when we came upon this scene. It was quite cold, sweater weather as you can see from the ladies in the painting; but there they were, waist-deep in the water, washing clothes. The stream was fed by hot springs. They were washing, talking, yelling, joking and when they had finished they began to strip off their own garments down to the slip and wash those clothes, too. Rural Mexico is still a bit on the prim side. Note the interested spectator in the distance.”
413
Clark Hulings 1922-2011
Springtime in Chelsea Oil on canvas
16 x 24 inches
Signed and dated 2008 lower left
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance: Scottsdale Art Auction, Scottsdale, AZ, 2010 Private collection, Michigan
Adopted by the West, Clark Hulings’ body of work reveals a healthy sampling of Western subjects, but then it shoots out in every direction, from Spain, France and Mexico to stateside locations such as Mississippi, Louisiana and New York. This painting from the Chelsea neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan was painted in 2008, late in the artist’s long and distinguished career.
414
Clark Hulings 1922-2011
Oil on board
16 x 12 inches
Signed and dated 1974 lower right
Estimate: $8,000 - 12,000
Dignity
415
Clark Hulings 1922-2011
The Little Water Carrier Oil on canvas
24 x 42 inches
Signed and dated 1994 lower right
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
416
From the Ashes, Life (Glacier National Park)
Oil on canvas mounted to board
24 x 36 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $12,000 - 16,000
417
Brent Cotton b. 1972
River Daydream
32 x 40 inches
Oil on board
Signed lower right; Signed, titled and small sketch verso
Estimate: $15,000 - 20,000
Mark Boedges b. 1973
418
John Stobart 1929-2023
By The Dawn’s Early Light Oil on canvas
23 x 34 inches
Signed and dated 1990 lower left; “Francis Scott Key observing Ft. McHenry Sept. 14, 1814”
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance: Private collection, South Carolina
One of the iconic painters of harbors, sailing ships and other maritime scenes, John Stobart studied boats in the water from many locations: his home in England, on ship journeys down to South Africa, on the Lawrence River in Canada and later from his Massachusetts home and studio. His works ranged from quiet harbor scenes to full-scale navy battles, and everything in between. In By the Dawn’s Early Light, Stobart shows Francis Scott Key observing the British bombardment on Fort McHenry, the event that birthed “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
419
22 x 24 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
420
20 x 40 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Colorado
Christopher Blossom b. 1956
Schooner America, Bound for the Pilot Station Oil on linen
Christopher Blossom b. 1956
Brig Belfast at Clark’s Point Oil on canvas
50
Signed lower right
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
421 Mian Situ b. 1953
The Lantern Peddler Oil on canvas
x 40 inches
422
Edouard Cortes 1882-1969
Grands Boulevards Paris Oil on canvas 13 x 18 inches
Signed lower right; Titled verso
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance: Private collection, Colorado
423
Edouard Cortes 1882-1969
Untitled (European Street Scene) Oil on canvas 13 x 18 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance: Private collection, Colorado
424
Kenneth Riley 1919-2015
Untitled
Acrylic on paper
5 ¾ x 4 ¾ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
425
Kenneth Riley 1919-2015
Evening Flute Song
Acrylic on board
4 ¾ x 4 inches
Signed/CA lower left
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
426
Kenneth Riley 1919-2015
Kanagan, British Columbia - Bighorn
Acrylic on board
8 x 16 inches
Signed and dated lower right “Kanagen, British Columbia”
Estimate: $3,000 - 5,000
427
Kenneth Riley 1919-2015
Winter Twilight Oil on canvas
44 x 36 inches
Signed/CA lower right
Estimate: $50,000 - 75,000
Provenance: Private collection, North Carolina
The prominent figure and horse that are featured in Winter Twilight must have been ideal subjects for Kenneth Riley, who painted them twice in nearly identical compositions—once here in Winter Twilight and again in 1997’s Winter Solstice, a larger work but with slightly less detail. Both pieces are nearly identical, but Winter Twilight has several nuances that aren’t in the larger version, including several small additions on the buffalo robe, more prominent quillwork on the figure’s leggings and distinct wagon tracks that lead back to the village. Other unique qualities to this version are the lodge openings in the painting’s background. Of key interest is the blowing flap of the central lodge, which reinforces the cold setting. In A Poetic Spirit: The Enduring Art of Kenneth Riley, author Susan Hallsten McGarry identifies the figure as a Mandan warrior and invokes the words of George Catlin, who documented Mandan villages in his treks west. The Mandan people were nearly wiped out by smallpox after 1837, a part of their history Riley was moved by. Although he focused on the years prior to the smallpox epidemic, the artist sympathized with their resentment of white people during those pivotal years in the 1830s. Riley returned to the Mandan people as subjects throughout his career.
428
Kenneth Riley 1919-2015
Dance of the Four Lances Oil on board
17 ½ x 13 ½ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Montana
429
Kenneth Riley 1919-2015
A Sketch for the Counsel
Acrylic on board
6 x 4 ½ inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
430
Roy Andersen 1930-2019
Valor’s Prize Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Signed/CA lower left
Estimate: $5,500 - 8,500
431
Roy Andersen 1930-2019
Los Apaches Oil on canvas
30 x 40 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $15,000 - 25,000
Provenance: Private collection, Louisiana
432
Morgan Weistling b. 1964
Tea and Sympathy Oil on canvas
26 x 30 inches
Signed and dated 2003 lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $15,000 - 25,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
433
Richard Schmid 1934-2021
Antique Gown
Oil on canvas
20 x 16 inches
Signed and dated 1980 lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $7,000 - 11,000
434
Richard Schmid 1934-2021
Summer Lilies
Oil on canvas
12 x 20 inches
Signed and dated 2004 lower right; Signed, titled and dated 2004 verso
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
Provenance:
West Wind Fine Art, Coeur d’Alene, ID
The McCloy Collection, Norman, OK
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Reno, NV, 2017
Private collection, Texas
Renowned around the world as an artist’s artist and respected as a teacher, Richard Schmid was a believer in the alla prima method—often called “wet on wet” or “direct painting,” which was Schmid’s preferred term—which meant to finish a painting in one sitting or a single session. The artist was beloved for his landcapes, nudes, portraits and, seen here with Summer Lilies, his floral paintings. The artist was famous for truly loving the act of putting paint to canvas. “I have been a painter for my entire adult life,” Schmid wrote in Alla Prima II: Everything I Know About Painting—and More. “In all of that time I have never been able to ignore the wonders possible in painting.”
435
Charles Wysocki 1928-2002
Angler’s Eden
Acrylic on board
10 ¾ x 12 inches
Signed lower left;
Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
436
Jay Moore b. 1964
Blue River Allure
Oil on linen
30 x 30 inches
Signed lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $8,000 - 12,000
437
Alfred Breanski Jr. 1877-1957
The Thames Above Pangbourne
Oil on canvas
30 x 40 inches
Signed lower left; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
438
Porfirio Salinas 1910-1973
Watching the Herd Oil on canvas
24 x 30 inches
Signed and dated 1965 lower left
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance: Private collection, Texas
Porfirio Salinas, the Texas artist who devoted much of his career to capturing the beauty of the Lone Star State, painted two versions of Watching the Herd in 1965. Neither are dated more specifically than the year, but it’s possible this painting is the second version due to the refined qualities in the composition and details in the foreground. Other than the addition of the creek and brush-topped ridge in this version, another notable change was made to the horse and rider that have been moved to a more prominent position to emphasize their position on the ridgeline. Both paintings are classic Salinas, but this one has notable tweaks that elevate it further.
439
Anna Hyatt Huntington 1876-1973
Yawning Tiger
Bronze, cast #45
8 ½ inches overall height, 28 inches wide
Signed; Gorham Co. Founders Q509
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
Anna Hyatt Huntington was the daughter of a paleontologist and illustrator, which makes sense that she became one of America’s most respected animal sculptors—and at a time when women artists were not treated as equals with male artists. Yawning Tiger, one of her most popular bronzes, was originally modeled in 1917. Casts run high into the 200s; this edition is cast number 43, an exceptionally low number for the subject. “Mrs. Huntington’s predilection for the sculpture of animals is happily exemplified by her Yawning Tiger, in which every muscle and tendon takes part in the magnificent stretch, from curved tail to extended paw,” the foundry notes in a 1928 publication. “The technique is notably simple in line and the composition of the figure is in itself a study in strength.”
440 David Shepherd 1931-2017
Reclining Lion/Brambles
Oil on canvas
8 x 11 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $3,500 - 5,000
441
David Shepherd 1931-2017
Water Buffalo in Tall Grass Oil on canvas
9 x 16 inches
Signed and dated 83 lower right
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance:
Bonhams, New York, NY, 2013
Private collection, Texas
Rejection came quick and fierce to David Shepherd. In 1949 he took a plane from London to Kenya, where he called on a game warden in Nairobi. Shepherd recalls the encounter: “‘Can I be a game warden?’ And he said, ‘No, bugger off.’ And I came back to England with my world in ruins.” But rejection didn’t deter him. It took decades, but Shepherd became one of the world’s best wildlife artists and one of the most outspoken conservationists whose foundation continues to support conservation across Africa and Asia.
442
Gary Swanson 1941-2010
Lioness and Four Cubs Oil on canvas
18 x 24 inches
Signed and dated 75 lower right; Artist stamp verso
Estimate: $2,000 - 3,000
36
Signed lower left
Estimate: $25,000 - 35,000
17 inches overall height
Signed Estimate: $1,500 - 2,500
443
Luke Frazier b. 1970 Zeus Oil on board
x 48 inches
444
Tim Shinabarger b. 1966
Full Curl
Bronze, cast 14/35
445
Tim Shinabarger b. 1966
Black Timber Bugler
Bronze, cast AP/30
26 ½ inches overall height
Signed, titled and dated 98
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Nebraska
446
Luke Frazier b. 1970
Great Northern - Study
Oil on board
12 x 16 inches
Signed lower left; Signed, titled and dated 2005 verso
Estimate: $2,500 - 3,500
447
Tim Shinabarger b. 1966
Across the Swamp Bronze, cast AP/30
31 inches overall height
Signed, titled and dated 97
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance: Private collection, Nebraska
448
James Reynolds 1926-2010
King of the Klondike Oil on canvas
30 x 34 inches
Signed lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $12,000 - 18,000
Provenance:
Claggett/Rey Gallery, Vail, Colorado
Private collection in Denver, Colorado
Private collection in California
449
Back to Camp Oil on board
24 x 30 inches
Signed lower right; Signed and titled verso
Estimate: $5,000 - 8,000
Two Setters
Bronze, cast 6/24
14 inches overall height
Signed and dated 2012
Estimate: $3,000 - 5,000
Nicholas Coleman b. 1978
450 Walter Matia b. 1953
451
13 x 10 inches
Signed lower left
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
452
Kenneth Bunn 1938-2020
Bronze, cast FP
11 ½ inches overall height
Signed Estimate: $3,000 - 5,000
Ken Carlson b. 1937
Quiet Observer
Oil on board
Cow Moose
453
Steve Burgess b. 1960
Contemplation
Oil on board
18 x 30 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $4,000 - 6,000
454
Richard Greeves 1935-2022
American Pronghorn
Bronze, cast #1
32 inches overall height
Signed and dated 1985
Estimate: $6,000 - 9,000
Equally adept at creating works small enough to fit on a mantle and large monuments that required hundreds of bronze pours, and everything in between, Richard Greeves was a preeminent sculptor of Native Americans and wildlife. Born into a working-class neighborhood in St. Louis, Greeves learned to work with his hands early, which guided him into sculpture later in life. At 15 years old he visited the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and fell in love with the people and culture. Today, Greeves’ works are in many important collections, including at the Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma. American Pronghorn sits permanently in the collection at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming.
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance: Private collection, Louisiana
455
David Mann b. 1948
Native Moon Oil on canvas
48 x 36 inches
Signed lower right
456
Don Oelze b. 1965
Valley of Plenty Oil on canvas
38 x 42 inches
Signed lower right
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
457
David Halbach 1931-2022
Mixed Kachina Dance Watercolor
29 x 41 inches
Signed/CA and dated 07 lower left
Estimate: $14,000 - 18,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
40 x 60 inches
Signed lower right; Signed & titled verso
Estimate: $8,000 - 12,000
459
40 x 27 inches
Signed lower right; Signed and dated 2023 verso
Estimate: $18,000 - 24,000
Provenance: The Artist Private collection, Ohio
458 Ray Roberts b. 1954 Canyon Dweller Oil on canvas mounted to board
Jeremy Winborg b. 1979 Quiet Contemplation Oil on board
Signed/CA lower right
Estimate: $20,000 - 30,000
Provenance: Private collection, Louisiana
460
John Moyers b. 1958
By the Light of the Moon Oil on canvas
58 x 48 inches
82 inches overall height
Signed
Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000
Provenance:
Private collection, Texas
461
Scott Rogers b. 1961
Vaquero Bronze, cast 5/10
462
Dave McGary 1958-2013
Last Stand Hill
Bronze, cast 21/40
35 inches overall height & 54 inches wide
Signed; Thumbprint in bronze
Estimate: $15,000 - 25,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona
463
Dave McGary 1958-2013
When Lighting Strikes Bronze, cast 20/30
25 inches overall height & 38 inches wide
Signed and dated 1991; Masterwork
Estimate: $10,000 - 15,000
Provenance: Private collection, Colorado
464
Dave McGary 1958-2013 Point of No Return Bronze, cast 27/60
30 inches overall height
Signed, fingerprint and dated 2000
Estimate: $9,000 - 12,000
Provenance: Private collection, Arizona circa 2000
Saturday • April 12, 2025 • Session II
Index – Alphabetical by Lot number
Artist Lot # Artist Lot #
Abbett, Robert ............................................... 363
Acheff, William 307, 308, 309
Andersen, Roy ........................................ 430, 431
Bailey, Brandon 343
Ballantyne, Carrie ........................................... 272
Bama, James 256
Beeler, Joe ...................................................... 351
Berninghaus, Oscar ................ 259, 389, 390, 391
Bierstadt, Albert 406
Biss, Earl ......................................................... 294
Black, Laverne Nelson 372
Blackshear, Thomas 314
Blossom, Christopher ............................ 419, 420
Boedges, Mark 416
Borein, Edward .. 258, 279, 280, 281, 317, 318, 319
Borg, Carl Oscar ............................................. 257
Bowman, Eric 341
Breanski Jr., Alfred ......................................... 437
Bunn, Kenneth 452
Burgess, Steve ................................................ 453
Carlson, Ken 451
Clymer, John Ford .......................................... 368
Coleman, John ....................... 329, 330, 331, 332
Coleman, Michael 255
Coleman, Nicholas ......................................... 449
Cortes, Edouard 422, 423
Cotton, Brent................................................... 417
Couse, Eanger Irving ............... FC, 369, 370, 371
Dallin, Cyrus .......................................... 395, 396
Dean, Glenn .................................................... 342
Delano, Gerard Curtis pg 83, 394, 397, 398, 399
Dixon, Maynard 181-240, 378
Durrie, George Henry 411
Dye, Charlie ..................................................... 286
Epp, Phil ......................................................... 325
Farny, Henry IFC, 377
Frazier, Luke ............................................ 443, 446
Gaspard, Leon 373, 374, 375, 376
Goodwin, Philip R. .................................. 249, 362
Greeves, Richard 454
Grelle, Martin .................................. 326, 327, 328
Hagege, Logan Maxwell 339, 340
Halbach, David ............................................... 457
Hamlin, Edith 241, 242
Harvey, G. ......................... 347, 348, 349, 350, BC
Herzog, Hermann ........................................... 253
Higgins, Victor 383
Hopper, Edward .............................................. 254
Houser, Allan 299, 300, 301
Hudson, Grace Carpenter 400
Hulings, Clark ......................... 412, 413, 414, 415
Hunt, Lynn Bogue 364
Hurley, Wilson ................................................. 367
Hyatt Huntington, Anna ................................. 439
Idol, Colt ......................................................... 346
Johnson, Frank Tenney 380, 388
Jordan, Jerry................................... 310, 311, 312
Kuhn, Bob .............................................. 250, 251
Kurz, Rudolf .................................................... 260
Artist
Saturday • April 12, 2025 • Session II
Index – Alphabetical by Lot number
Liang, Z.S. ...................................... 263, 337, 338
Lovell, Tom 276, 277, 278, 352, 353
Maggiori, Mark ..................... 333, 334, 335, 336
Mann, David 266, 455
Marris, Bonnie ................................................ 273
Matia, Walter 450
McCarthy, Frank .... 282, 283, 284, 287, 315, 316
McGary, Dave .... 290, 291, 292, 293, 462, 463, 464
Mell, Ed 320, 321, 322, 323, 324
Moore, Jay ...................................................... 436
Moore, Paul 264
Moran, Thomas 403
Moyers, John .......................................... 265, 460
Nahl, Charles ................................................. 410
Nieto, John ..................... 302, 303, 304, 305, 306
Norton, Jim 267, 268
Oelze, Don 289, 456
Owen, Bill 285
Payne, Edgar 404
Pleissner, Ogden............................................. 361
Polzin, Kyle ..................................... 354, 355, 356
Poppleton, Chad 345
Red Star, Kevin 295
Remington, Frederic 402
Reynolds, James ............................................ 448
Riddick, R.S. 313
Riley, Kenneth ........ 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429
Roberts, Gary Lynn 288
Roberts, Ray 458
Rogers, Scott 461
Rolshoven, Julius 401
Rungius, Carl ......... 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248
Russell, Charles M. pg 85, 262, 379, 385, 386
Salinas, Porfirio ............................................. 438
Sandzen, Birger 405
Schmid, Richard ..................................... 433, 434
Scholder, Fritz 296, 297, 298
Schreyvogel, Charles 381, 382
Seltzer, Olaf C. ................................................ 261
Sharp, Joseph Henry 384, 387, 392, 393
Shepherd, David ..................................... 440, 441
Shinabarger, Tim 252, 444, 445, 447
Situ, Mian 421
Smith, Tucker .......................................... 365, 366
Solliday, Tim 344
Stobart, John .................................................. 418
Swanson, Gary ................................................ 442
Swanson, Ray 269, 270, 271
Terpning, Howard 357, 358, 359, 360
Walters, Curt ................................. 407, 408, 409
Weistling, Morgan 432
Wieghorst, Olaf ....................................... 274, 275
Winborg, Jeremy ............................................ 459
Wysocki, Charles 435
Terms and Conditions
BUYER’S PREMIUM The purchase price payable by the Purchaser shall be the total of the final bid price PLUS A PREMIUM OF SEVENTEEN PERCENT (17%) on any individual lot in the amount up to and including $2,000,000; TWELVE PERCENT (12%) on any individual lot on the amount in excess of $2,000,000. This premium is in addition to any commissions or other charges payable by the consignor.
Auction
The art illustrated in these two catalogues will be offered for sale on April 11 & 12, 2025 by Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC on premises at 7176 Main Street, Scottsdale, Arizona. Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC is not responsible for any postponements of the sale due to conditions out of their control.
Telephone Bidding
As a courtesy to clients who are unable to attend the sale, a telephone and order (absentee) bid service will be offered as staff and time allow. Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC shall not be responsible for any errors or omissions or failure to execute such bids. Contact Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC at (480) 945-0225 (or register online) early for arrangements as telephone lines will be allocated on a first come basis. Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC will arrange for telephone lines on lots with a minimum estimate of $5,000 and over.
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1. Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC reserves the right to withdraw Property at any time before or at the sale and shall have no liability for such withdrawal.
2. All Property will be sold “AS IS”. With respect to each lot of Property, Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC does not make any guarantees, warranties or representations, expressed or implied, as to merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, the correctness of the catalogue or the authenticity or description of the Property, its physical condition, size, quality, rarity, importance, medium, provenance, exhibitions, literature or historical relevance. No statement, anywhere, whether oral or written, whether made in the catalogue, an advertisement, a bill of sale, a salesroom posting or announcement, or elsewhere, shall be deemed such a warranty, representation or assumption of liability. In no event shall Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC be responsible for genuineness, authorship, attribution, provenance, period, culture, source, origin or condition of the purchased Property and no verbal statements made regarding the Property either before or after the sale of the Property, or in any bill of sale, invoice or catalogue or advertisement or elsewhere shall be deemed such a guarantee of genuineness, or authenticity. Notwithstanding the foregoing, if within ten (10) calendar days after the purchase of any lot of Property, the Purchaser provides an opinion by a recognized authority on the artist and gives notice in writing to Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC that the lot is not authentic, and returns the purchased lot to Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC, within ten (10) days of its purchase in the same condition as when sold, then Scottsdale Art Auction,
LLC will refund the full purchase price to the Purchaser. It shall be in the sole discretion of Scottsdale Art Auction, LLC as to whether the opinion provided by the Purchaser is an opinion by a recognized authority on the artist.
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11. Biding on any item indicates your acceptance of these terms and all other terms announced at the time of sale whether bidding in person, by phone, by Internet, by absentee bid, or through a representative.
12. In most instances, sculpture measurements do not include base. In measurements for two dimensional art, height precedes width and does not include frame.
13. Bidding increments will normally follow the pattern below but may vary at the sole discretion of the Auctioneer.
Increment
Increment
Photography: Rob Kaufman
Hilton Head Island, SC (843) 290-8883
www.kaufmanphotography.com
Design & Production
Cindy & Paula Moser Phoenix, AZ (843) 441-3686 www.xmsdesigns.com
Printing: Courier Graphics Corporation Phoenix, AZ (602) 437-9700 www.couriergraphics.com
