Painting of the Day, November 5, 2011

By Donna Poulton

Contemporary Utah artist George Handrahan paints the red rock of southern Utah and is well known for his regional farming scenes such as this scene from Liberty, Utah.  He depicted this composition from a vertiginous height so that the key element, the mountain casting the shadow, becomes the dominant unseen force. Handrahan notes, “It will soon envelop the farm and affect all within.  Slowly it will replace the warm afternoon light with winter’s defining cold darkness.”

Credit: Image courtesy of George Handrahan

George Handrahan, In the Shadow of the Mountain, 2007, oil on linen, 24 x 30 in. 

Painting of the Day, November 4, 2011

By Donna Poulton

The Lost Art of Letter Writing:

Charles Russell was a natural born storyteller. He painted vignettes on many of the humorous letters (always signed with a buffalo skull) he sent to friends and family over the years. Usually the images depicted an anecdote he was highlighting in his letters. His illustrated letters are coveted by collectors and in some cases cost more than his paintings. In this letter to Guy Weadick, Russell is illustrating the scenic area around Guy’s Alberta, Canada ranch and the tourists who came to visit.

Credit: Amon Carter Museum

Charles M. Russell (1864-1926), Illustrated letter to Russell’s friend Guy Weadick, November 23, 1921, Watercolor, ink, opaque watercolor, and graphite on paper. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (1961.300)

Credit: antiquesand the arts.com

The envelope is addressed to “Young Boy,” a Cree Indian who worked for Russell and lived in Havre, Montana.

Painting of the Day, November 3, 2011

By Donna Poulton

"When I was a little boy and lived in Maine, I read everything about the West I could get my hands on - not dime novels, but everything authentic. I lived the life in prospect. Then I lived it in actuality, living with cowpunchers in Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona - all along the cattle strip. Now that those days are gone, I live it in retrospect and in my pictures." - W. Herbert Dunton

W. Herbert  “Buck” Dunton was a successful illustrator working for Scribner’s, Harper’s, and for Zane Grey before settling in Taos and becoming founding member of the Taos Society of Artists.  While his illustrations are more detailed and representative, his finished easel work is much more stylized.           

Credit: amica.davidrumsey.com

W. Herbert “Buck” Dunton (1878 – 1936), Fall in the Foothills, c. 1933, oil on canvas, 34 x 42 in. Collection of the AMICA Library

Painting of the Day, November 2, 2011

By Donna Poulton

"This strong primitive appeal calls out the side of art that is not derivative; it urges the painter to get his subjects, his coloring, his tone from the real life about him, not from the wisdom of the studios." - Victor Higgins

Credit: Image courtesy of private collector

William Victor Higgins (1884-1949), Pink and Black, 1930s, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 in. Private Collection

Victor Higgins first learned of Taos while studying art in Chicago and Munich. In 1913 he moved to Taos and joined the Society of Taos Artists in 1917. Influenced by the modernists of the time, his work evolved toward reduced and flattened forms, while taking advantage of the pure color inherent in the design of native people and of the landscape.

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.