Leslie Thrasher

'Ride Him Cowboy' Liberty Magazine Cover

1929

Original cover for Liberty magazine, published July 12, 1930. Lil and Sandy’s neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Smithers, take their daughter Gwen and little Ulysses to the beach. The childre...

Original cover for Liberty magazine, published February 9, 1929. Sandy and Lil relax on a Florida beach, marveling at how wonderful it is to be rich, for the couple recently inherit...

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...

The work shown is one of a series of nine paintings. Conceptually, the series deals with the consequences of human indifference, nihilism and the triumph of hope. This painting repre...