George " Pepper " Brown

"Roy Matthews Calf Roping" Famous 1930s/40s Rodeo Rider

1942

Pepper Brown (1926-1999) Alpine Artist Image Size: 9.5 x 13.25 Frame Size: 15.5 x 19 Medium: Ink Drawing Dated 1942 "Jim Whiteman Riding a Bull"

Pepper Brown (1926-1999) Alpine Artist Image Size: 9 x 13 Frame Size: 16 x 20 Medium: Ink Drawing Dated 1942 "Cheyenne Wyoming Frontier Days" Harry Hart W...

Pepper Brown (1926-1999) Alpine Artist Image Size: 19 x 15.5 Frame Size: 25.5 x 22 Medium: Ink Drawing Jerry Ambler won National Champion 1946-47; 1947 T...

E. Salazar Texas Artist Image Size: 15 x 13 Frame Size: 19 x 17 Medium: Oil on Canvas "Riding High"

Lon Megargee 1883-1960 "The Bronc" Wood block print Signed in plate, lower right Image size: 9 x 10 inches Frame size 21 x 21.5 inches Creator of Stetson's hat logo "Last Drop from his Hat" Lon Megargee 1883 - 1960 At age 13, Lon Megargee came to Phoenix in 1896 following the death of his father in Philadelphia. For several years he resided with relatives while working at an uncle’s dairy farm and at odd jobs. He returned to Philadelphia in 1898 – 1899 in order to attend drawing classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Back in Phoenix in 1899, he decided at the age of 16 to try to make his living as a cowboy. Lon moved to the cow country of Wickenburg, Arizona where he was hired by Tex Singleton’s Bull Ranch. He later joined the Three Bar R. . . and after a few years, was offered a job by Billy Cook of the T.T. Ranch near New River. By 1906, Megargee had learned his trade well enough to be made foreman of Cook’s outfit. Never shy about taking risks, Lon soon left Cook to try his own hand at ranching. He partnered with a cowpuncher buddy, Tom Cavness, to start the El Rancho Cinco Uno at New River. Unfortunately, the young partners could not foresee a three-year drought that would parch Arizona, costing them their stock and then their hard-earned ranch. Breaking with his romantic vision of cowboy life, Megargee finally turned to art full time. He again enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art and then the Los Angeles School of Art and Design during 1909 – 1910. The now well-trained student took his first trip to paint “en plein air” (outdoors) to the land of Hopi and Navajo peoples in northern Arizona. After entering paintings from this trip in the annual Territorial Fair at Phoenix, in 1911, he surprisingly sold his first oil painting to a major enterprise – the Santa Fe Railroad . . . Lon received $50 for “Navajos Watching the Santa Fe Train.” He soon sold the SFRR ten paintings over the next two years. For forty years the railroad was his most important client, purchasing its last painting from him in 1953. In a major stroke of good fortune during his early plein-air period, Megargee had the opportunity to paint with premier artist, William R. Leigh (1866 – 1955). Leigh furnished needed tutoring and counseling, and his bright, impressionistic palette served to enhance the junior artist’s sense of color and paint application. In a remarkable display of unabashed confidence and personable salesmanship, Lon Megargee, at age 30, forever linked his name with Arizona art history. Despite the possibility of competition from better known and more senior artists, he persuaded Governor George Hunt and the Legislature in 1913 to approve 15 large, historic and iconic murals for the State Capitol Building in Phoenix. After completing the murals in 1914, he was paid the then princely sum of roughly $4000. His Arizona statehood commission would launch Lon to considerable prominence at a very early point in his art career. Following a few years of art schooling in Los Angeles, and several stints as an art director with movie studios, including Paramount, Megargee turned in part to cover illustrations for popular Western story magazines in the 1920s. In the 1920s, as well, Lon began making black and white prints of Western types and of genre scenes from woodblocks. These prints he generally signed and sold singly. In 1933, he published a limited edition, signed and hard-cover book (about 250 copies and today rare)containing a group of 28 woodblock images. Titled “The Cowboy Builds a Loop,” the prints are noteworthy for strong design, excellent draftsmanship, humanistic and narrative content, and quality. Subjects include Southwest Indians and cowboys, Hispanic men and women, cattle, horses, burros, pioneers, trappers, sheepherders, horse traders, squaw men and ranch polo players. Megargee had a very advanced design sense for simplicity and boldness which he demonstrated in how he used line and form. His strengths included outstanding gestural (action) art and strong figurative work. He was superb in design, originality and drawing, as a study of his prints in the Hays collection reveals. In 1944, he published a second group of Western prints under the same title as the first. Reduced to 16 images from the original 28 subjects, and slightly smaller, Lon produced these prints in brown ink on a heavy, cream-colored stock. He designed a sturdy cardboard folio to hold each set. For the remainder of his life, Lon had success selling these portfolios to museum stores, art fairs and shows, and to the few galleries then selling Western art. Drawing on real working and life experiences, Lon Megargee had a comprehensive knowledge, understanding and sensitivity for Southwestern subject matter. Noted American modernist, Lew Davis...

This is an oil on artist board (unframed) by the important Hungarian-born and internationally celebrated Denes de Holesch (1910-1983). Denes de Holesch was an international equestrian artist. His works have been exhibited all over the world, including in New York, Beverly Hills, Boston, Chicago, Paris, Mexico City, Montreal, Tokyo, Sydney, and Madrid. His horse paintings fall into one of seven themes, including polo, cowboys, circus, rodeo, hunt, bull-fight, race-course and running free. His mastery of the subject has been compared to that of Picasso, Delacroix and Franc Marc. 1910 Denes Dezo George de Holesch was born on 9 February, 1910 at Banska-Bystrica, Northern Hungary. He was the third child and youngest son of Hugo de Holesch, an architect and Margit, nee Wagner. Many generations of the de Holesch family had worked as professional architects. He studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest on a scholarship. Early in his career he traveled to China, Japan, Philippines, Java, Bali and Australia, where his reputation grew rapidly. Here he produced portraits in oils, and lithographs of the Chinese, as well as landscape works in oils,depicting the local countryside, and canal, street and city scenes. His exposure to the arts of the Chinese, with their simplicity of line, greatly influenced his later works. In 1939 he established a studio at Lavender Bay near Sydney. In 1940 he exhibited at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney. In 1944 he married Joyce Greer, the Melbourne concert pianist. In 1945 the couple moved to New York where his interest in horses grew. He held exhibitions at Gallery Wildenstein, Herve, and FAR Gallery. In 1946 Holesch moved to Montreal where he exhibited at the National Gallery of Montreal. In 1947 he moved to Boston where he continued painting portraits and horses. He exhibited there at the Ehrmann and Vose galleries. Later in the year he moved to San Francisco where he was invited to participate in the "Renoir to Picasso" Exhibition held at the Maxwell Gallery.1946 He moved to Montreal, Canada and exhibited at the National Gallery of Montreal. (Frederic Remington and Charles Russell) 1947 Early in the year he moved to Boston and continued painting portraits and horses. In June, he painted the portrait of Harvard Law School Dean, Erwin N. Griswold, and in October his works were exhibited at Margaret Brown's Galerie Intime, Newbury Street, Boston. 1948 He produced a clay sculpture head of Egon Petri, one of a number of clay sculptures that he produced. He also produced a number of wood carvings. His paintings were chosen for inclusion in a Group Exhibition in the National Gallery of San Francisco, and in the important and prestigious 'Renoir to Picasso' Exhibition held at Maxwell's Galleries, 372 Sutter Street, San Francisco. 1953 His works were included in a Group Impressionists Exhibition held at the Ohana Gallery, London 1954 He travelled to New York, where he was commissioned to paint Herbert Gasser, Nobel Prize Winner in Biochemistry. 1955 He returned to England, and then travelled to Paris to exhibit works in the Galerie Marcel Lenoir. 1956 He again returned to New York to work on portrait commissions and for exhibitions of his works, mainly of horses. These exhibitions were held in New York, Boston, San Francisco and late in the year at the Galleries of Frank J. Oehlschlaeger at 107 East Oak Street, Chicago. During this year, visits with his family to Ringling Circus and to a rodeo in Tucson, Arizona must have impressed him greatly, for images of these events soon appeared on his canvases. His work was greatly admired by Hollywood film- stars, such as Ann Rutherford and Burt Lancaster, and David Niven purchased one of the horse paintings to give as his wedding present to Grace Kelly on her marriage to Sovereign Prince Rainier III of Monaco. 1959 The prints of 'Courtship' and 'Chargers' were produced. It has been estimated that close to a million copies of his prints were sold over the next ten years, with 'Courtship' being advertised by Stern's Book Dpt. on 5th Avenue, New York along with prints by Picasso, Degas, Goya, Modigliani, Renoir and Van Gogh. 1960 He moved to Antibes, on the French Riviera in the South-East of France. An exhibition of his works was held in the Galerie des Etats-Unis, Cannes and his works were now permanently exhibited at Galerie Madsen, Rue St. Honore, Paris and Galerie Davis, Place Vendome, Paris. 1961 Known to Picasso, he was invited to attend a special bull-fight held in the South of France, which was organized for Pablo Picasso's 80th birthday. 1975 He moved from Voulangis to Castelfontana in the Dorf Tirol overlooking Merano, Italy. He remained there for close to a year and exhibited his works in a group exhibition in Merano in which works by Salvador Dali and Annigoni were also displayed. 1979 He returned to the old farmhouse at Voulangis. During this time he painted the portrait of Pope John Paul II. 1989 a catalog and biography of Holesch entitled Holesch Horse Paintings 1910-1983 was published by Andrew Mackenzie...

Cowboys Horses Cattle WPA American Scene Social Realism Mid 20th Century Modern Jo Cain (1904 – 2003) Cowboy 33 3/4 x 36 inches Oil on paper, c. 1930s Signed...

Original Mid Century Pen and Ink on Paper "Cowboy and Bronco" Western Genre Compelling pen and ink western picture of Cowboy wrangling the bro...