Image of the Day - Vintage Photo, April 24, 2012

This photograph is spooky.

© My-West.com Photography Collection. All rights reserved.Initially, we thought we had added a nice photograph depicting two women fishing to our My-West collection. After scanning it, however, the eerie silhouette of a man in the upper right corner of the photograph was revealed. Any ideas?

Vernacular photograph of the West from the My-West.com photography collection, circa 1900.

Painting of the Day, December 9, 2011

By Donna Poulton

"Winter is lovely to paint because…you’ve got a beautiful harmony of color relationships—the lavenders in the road. Every note of color has a relationship." - LeConte Stewart

LeConte Stewart once said he “would rather paint then eat.” He was one of Utah’s most important regional artists because of his style and because he concentrated on a narrow valley hugging the foothills of the Wasatch mountains. For more than seventy-five years he painted the urban and rural landscape of northern Utah. Preferring the outdoors to the studio, he could often be seen at the side of a road or out in a field sketching or painting. People knew that if he didn’t acknowledge you when you walked by, he didn’t want to be bothered, but if he said hello, it was a signal that he welcomed the company.

LeConte Stewart (1890-1991), Untitled, c. 1949, oil, location unknown

For more information on Stewart you might be interested in this post about a current exhibition of his work.

Painting of the Day, November 1, 2011

By Donna Poulton

“I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever … and the more I considered the subject, the bigger the forever loomed…I began to record some facts around me, and the more I looked the more the panorama unfolded.” –Frederic Remington

Credit: americanpicturelinks

Frederic Remington (1861 – 1909), Friends or Foes, c. 1903, oil on canvas. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

In the painting Friends or Foes also known as The Scout, the lone Crow Indian rider cautiously looks at the distant camp not knowing who he might find. The painting depicts the wide-open spaces, but it also offered Remington another scenario for illustrating a horse—a fascination and repeating motif in nearly all of his work.