MAYNARD DIXON (1875-1946)

Wind of Wyoming

Details

MAYNARD DIXON (1875-1946)
Wind of Wyoming
signed, inscribed and dated 'Maynard Dixon/Wyo. 1936' (lower right)--signed again, inscribed with title, numbered '557' and inscribed '728 Montgomery/San Francisco' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
25 1/8 x 30¼ in. (63.8 x 76.8 cm.)

Provenance

Acquired by the husband of the present owner, circa 1940s.

Exhibited

Biltmore Art Galleries, Los Angeles, California, June 15-July 4, 1942.

Lot Essay

In 1936, Dixon spent a week in Wind River County, Wyoming accompanied by his sons Daniel and John, and Luke Gibney, a friend. "From drawings and small oil studies made on the trip, Maynard painted several striking canvases" including Wind of Wyoming. (D.J. Hagerty, Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, Layton, Utah, 1993, p. 222)

"By the middle 1930s Maynard had emptied most of his landscape paintings of human or animal figures." (Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, p. 222) In the present work, Dixon captures beauty and desolation in the vast prairie, cloud-filled sky and the shadowy mesas and mountains in the far distance.

This work will be included in Donald J. Hagerty's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's works and is listed as #557 in Maynard Dixon's master paintings ledger.