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Lot Essay
In 1921, while Maynard Dixon was living in San Francisco shortly after his marriage to photographer Dorothea Lange, the artist took some time away from city life to rejuvenate himself and to seek inspiration for this work. "Exhausted after completing his first mural and ill with severe asthma, Maynard had to abandon San Francisco in the spring of 1921 for Refuge in the San Joaquin Valley. There he sketched and painted the land of his boyhood, working to refine his compositions and color. Riding over the open rangeland, he made drawings and paintings of cattle and horse herds. . . . He also painted lonely ranch buildings, cowboys herding cattle, dry arroyos, alkali sinks, and the faraway horizon shadowed by billowing white clouds over the higher ranges of the Sierra Nevada." (D. J. Hagerty, Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, Layton, Utah, 1993, p. 107)
Stimulated by his genuine Western experience in the San Joaquin valley, Maynard Dixon painted The Crossing, a vivid transcript of ranch life in northern California in the 1920s. At this point in his career, Dixon had recently developed his signature style, and was enjoying "experimenting with the suppression of detail in his paintings, using stronger colors and emphasizing the feeling of space, rearranging compositions in ways that shaped his canvases into decorative patterns. Maynard developed a poetic and spiritual approach to the expression of the West's human and physical landscapes, eventually abandoning the security of his earlier techniques as he embarked on a quest for a more personal and distinctive style." (Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, p. 102)
The Crossing, with its sharply delineated forms and color combinations is a classic example of Dixon's fresh and unique approach to Western subject matter. "He records the subject with honest simplicity. In his larger works we find marked proof that he had absorbed and digested the intent of the newer movements and unfoldments of modern art . . . . In this broader scope he is as faithful as ever to his Western life, as accurate as to types and locality, but handling them in a new way. Dixon paints the West, his country, yet beyond the incidental phases, the entire work shows discernment, grasp and power of adaptation which prove the artist to be leaps ahead of those who are content with imitative realism. All of which assures verification and security of position for his work in the world of art." (Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, p. 103)
Stimulated by his genuine Western experience in the San Joaquin valley, Maynard Dixon painted The Crossing, a vivid transcript of ranch life in northern California in the 1920s. At this point in his career, Dixon had recently developed his signature style, and was enjoying "experimenting with the suppression of detail in his paintings, using stronger colors and emphasizing the feeling of space, rearranging compositions in ways that shaped his canvases into decorative patterns. Maynard developed a poetic and spiritual approach to the expression of the West's human and physical landscapes, eventually abandoning the security of his earlier techniques as he embarked on a quest for a more personal and distinctive style." (Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, p. 102)
The Crossing, with its sharply delineated forms and color combinations is a classic example of Dixon's fresh and unique approach to Western subject matter. "He records the subject with honest simplicity. In his larger works we find marked proof that he had absorbed and digested the intent of the newer movements and unfoldments of modern art . . . . In this broader scope he is as faithful as ever to his Western life, as accurate as to types and locality, but handling them in a new way. Dixon paints the West, his country, yet beyond the incidental phases, the entire work shows discernment, grasp and power of adaptation which prove the artist to be leaps ahead of those who are content with imitative realism. All of which assures verification and security of position for his work in the world of art." (Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, p. 103)