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Lot Essay
Maynard Dixon captured the magnificent sweeping landscape of the American West in a deeply personal and dramatic artistic style. In works such as Land Westward, the rich artistic legacy of the artist, fueled by his belief in the sanctity of painting for self-expression, is evident.
Dixon's work became known to the American public through the widespread exposure of works he executed for magazines and newspapers. Like so many American artists of the early twentieth century, especially Western ones, Dixon spent his early career as an illustrator as a way to earn a living while engaging in the creation of his own body of works.
Dixon was born in Fresno, California in 1875, in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, where the terrain is dominated by open expanses of land and sky. As a child he suffered from asthma, and because of that illness, he led a quiet childhood. "A shy, sensitive youth, Maynard Dixon listened, looked and remembered, absorbing impressions of simplicity, low-laid masses of land, and the far-flung decorative sweeps of sky. Such shapes dominate and give signature to the art of his later years. 'No doubt,' he once reflected, 'these flat scenes have influenced my work. I don't like to psychoanalyze myself, but I have always felt my boyhood impressions are responsible for my 'weakness' for horizontal lines.'" (D.J. Hagerty, Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, Layton, Utah, 1993, p. 5)
Even in his early works, done in the 1910s, Dixon refused to portray the West as many contemporary Western artists were doing. He objected to the way those artists romanticized the Western way of life by portraying its people engaged in conflict and capture. He made a more conscious effort to direct his art away from this limited categorization in the early 1920s, a time that marked a turning point for Dixon.
The present canvas, executed in 1936, emphasizes the rhythms of space, form, color and light in a decidedly modern treatment. Edith Hamlin, the artist's wife, wrote of the Dixon's works from this period, "By the 1930s, he included what he called 'space division' in order to bring into line the most dominant diagonals, horizontals or verticals of his work. In both field drawings as well as studio compositions and landscapes, Dixon was very selective as to the simplification of the subject material--rearranging, discarding and accentuating the theme to suit his own aesthetic purposes. His style developed as a tool for his messages, not as an end in itself." (as quoted in D.J. Hagerty, "Visions and Images: Maynard Dixon and the American West", Maynard Dixon: Images of the Native American, San Francisco, California, 1981, p. 24)
In Land Westward, a solitary cowboy in a massive prairie expanse unhurriedly moves several horses across the plain. The figure's are dwarfed by the vast sweep of land and sky. The silence and emptiness of nature, which Dixon loved to demonstrate, is evident in the hushed stillness of this scene. "By the middle 1930s Maynard had emptied most of his landscape paintings of human or animal figures. However, in . . . Land Westward, he included the figure of a cowboy on his horse, along with several pack animals, thus intensifying the loneliness of a desolate landscape measured by a far horizon." (Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, p. 222) In Land Westward, Dixon has fully realized his masterful vision of the Western landscape.
This painting will be included in Donald J. Hagerty's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's works and is listed as no. 561 in Maynard Dixon's master painting record.
Dixon's work became known to the American public through the widespread exposure of works he executed for magazines and newspapers. Like so many American artists of the early twentieth century, especially Western ones, Dixon spent his early career as an illustrator as a way to earn a living while engaging in the creation of his own body of works.
Dixon was born in Fresno, California in 1875, in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, where the terrain is dominated by open expanses of land and sky. As a child he suffered from asthma, and because of that illness, he led a quiet childhood. "A shy, sensitive youth, Maynard Dixon listened, looked and remembered, absorbing impressions of simplicity, low-laid masses of land, and the far-flung decorative sweeps of sky. Such shapes dominate and give signature to the art of his later years. 'No doubt,' he once reflected, 'these flat scenes have influenced my work. I don't like to psychoanalyze myself, but I have always felt my boyhood impressions are responsible for my 'weakness' for horizontal lines.'" (D.J. Hagerty, Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, Layton, Utah, 1993, p. 5)
Even in his early works, done in the 1910s, Dixon refused to portray the West as many contemporary Western artists were doing. He objected to the way those artists romanticized the Western way of life by portraying its people engaged in conflict and capture. He made a more conscious effort to direct his art away from this limited categorization in the early 1920s, a time that marked a turning point for Dixon.
The present canvas, executed in 1936, emphasizes the rhythms of space, form, color and light in a decidedly modern treatment. Edith Hamlin, the artist's wife, wrote of the Dixon's works from this period, "By the 1930s, he included what he called 'space division' in order to bring into line the most dominant diagonals, horizontals or verticals of his work. In both field drawings as well as studio compositions and landscapes, Dixon was very selective as to the simplification of the subject material--rearranging, discarding and accentuating the theme to suit his own aesthetic purposes. His style developed as a tool for his messages, not as an end in itself." (as quoted in D.J. Hagerty, "Visions and Images: Maynard Dixon and the American West", Maynard Dixon: Images of the Native American, San Francisco, California, 1981, p. 24)
In Land Westward, a solitary cowboy in a massive prairie expanse unhurriedly moves several horses across the plain. The figure's are dwarfed by the vast sweep of land and sky. The silence and emptiness of nature, which Dixon loved to demonstrate, is evident in the hushed stillness of this scene. "By the middle 1930s Maynard had emptied most of his landscape paintings of human or animal figures. However, in . . . Land Westward, he included the figure of a cowboy on his horse, along with several pack animals, thus intensifying the loneliness of a desolate landscape measured by a far horizon." (Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, p. 222) In Land Westward, Dixon has fully realized his masterful vision of the Western landscape.
This painting will be included in Donald J. Hagerty's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's works and is listed as no. 561 in Maynard Dixon's master painting record.