Charles Russell and Maynard Dixon Paintings Given to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts Collection (original) (raw)

Utah Museum of Fine Arts

Salt Lake City, UT

(801) 581-7332

www.utah.edu/umfa

Charles Russell and Maynard Dixon Paintings Given to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts Collection

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts is pleased to announce four new gifts from the collection of Mr. John Jarman and his wife, the late Helen Jarman. Mr. and Mrs. Jarman have long been generous donors to the Museum. This most recent gift includes three watercolors by one of the most famous of all Western artists, Charles M. Russell, and an oil painting collaborated on by Maynard Dixon and his wife, Edith Hamlin Dixon. Until now, the work of Russell was not represented in the Museum's collections, making this donation of particular significance.

Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926) was an authentic cowboy as well as a cowboy artist. His themes were the more adventurous aspects of western life-shootouts, horse thieves, and, of course, the interaction of settlers and Native Americans. As an artist he was largely self-taught, and his work is independent of contemporary art movements or theories. Like his contemporary, Frederic Remington, Russell did illustration work and first gained his reputation this way. The Museum owns several bronze casts from Frederic Remington, including Bronco Buster after 1898. (A gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert I. Michael.) Indeed, Remington's success helped advance Russell's career as the country became fascinated with the "Wild West" in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Museum's new Russells are in excellent condition and are typical of his mature style and subject matter. One features a Mexican vaquero (cowboy) colorfully dressed and riding his horse; another depicts a powerful Indian warrior; and the last shows two cowboys sharing a drink out on a cold, winter's day. The watercolors from Mr. and Mrs. Jarman are currently on view in the Helene Druke Shaw Gallery at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

For further biographical information on selected artists cited above please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

rev. 9/20/10

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