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Curators' Picks: June 18 Western Art Signature® Auction
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Alissa's Picks
Alissa Ford | Vice President, American & Western Art
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No wildlife collection is complete without Richard Friese, a towering figure in the history of wildlife art. Monarch of the Whispering Pines,
1891, is a rare-to-market, monumental work that showcases Friese’s mastery at the height of his career. I especially admire how he positions the viewer as an active presence within the scene. The stag’s alert stance and direct gaze imply an awareness of something just beyond view, creating a quiet tension between observer and observed. This subtle psychological nuance draws us further into the composition. The moss-covered branches and drifting mist vividly convey the damp atmosphere, while every element of the stag is rendered with remarkable precision. Originally exhibited at the Germanic National Museum, the painting was later acquired by the chairman of PepsiCo, who prominently displayed it in his Park Avenue penthouse. After the current owner’s grandfather
expressed his admiration for the work during a dinner visit, the chairman gifted it to the family. The painting has remained in the same family collection for the past fifty-seven years.
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We have a wonderful selection of Contemporary Native American art in this auction, and perhaps one of my favorites is Indian Sitting on Bed, 1974. Trained under Wayne Thiebaud, Scholder clearly absorbed the influence of the Bay Area Figurative movement, evident in his bold brushwork and expressive use of color. More importantly, however, was the way he portrayed his own culture. Rather than depicting Native people through romanticized stereotypes or historical fantasy, Scholder presented Native subjects as contemporary individuals living in the modern world. His work offered a more truthful and humanizing perspective, allowing Native voices to be represented with dignity, complexity, and authenticity.
Indian Sitting on Bed,
1974, is a monumental work that marks a significant turning point in the history of Native American art and demonstrates how Scholder transformed the representation of Indigenous peoples in American art. Here, a man sits on his bed in blue jeans, holding a cup of coffee within a quiet interior setting. At first glance, the composition appears straightforward, but Scholder’s expressive style imbues the work with emotional depth and individuality. The figure is neither dressed in ceremonial attire nor placed within a dramatic Western landscape. Instead, the subject occupies an ordinary environment, emphasizing the reality of everyday life. Through his fearless and innovative style, Fritz Scholder helped expand the possibilities of Native American art and created space for
future generations of Indigenous artists to tell their own stories with honesty and confidence.
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G. Harvey was a master at capturing the values and spirit of the American West. Two iconic examples of this are Night Passage, 1985 and Dry Camp, 1967. Although painted more than two decades apart, both works reflect Harvey's enduring admiration for the resilience, hard work, and quiet dignity of the cowboy way of life.
Night Passage, 1985 is a masterful nocturne that feels both serene and dramatic. The poetic composition depicts two cowboys setting out on an evening ride accompanied by their faithful packhorse. Behind them, a cabin glows warmly against the darkening landscape. Harvey frequently employed illumination to create emotional depth, and here the soft golden light emanating from the cabin contrasts strikingly with the cool blues and grays of the mountains and evening sky, creating a sense of comfort, solitude, and anticipation.
A similar sensitivity to light is evident in Dry Camp, 1967. Towering, sunlit mountains rise across the background, creating a sense of grandeur and depth, while cool shadows sweep through the middle ground, emphasizing both the beauty and ruggedness of the terrain. In the foreground, wisps of smoke drift upward from the glowing embers of a campfire, subtly guiding the viewer's eye toward a cowboy saddling his horse as another rider waits patiently nearby. The scene captures a quiet moment of preparation, transforming an everyday task into a tribute to the discipline and perseverance of frontier life.
Together, Night Passage, 1985 and Dry Camp, 1967 present an idealized vision of the American West, celebrating the character and endurance of its people. These works not only demonstrate Harvey's technical mastery of light, atmosphere, and composition, but also reflect his lifelong fascination with Western heritage and the enduring values it represents.
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Gerard Curtis Delano, born in Connecticut to the son of a sea captain, displayed artistic talent early in life and sold illustrations to Life Magazine before studying at the Art Students League and Grand Central School of Art under Dean Cornwell and N.C. Wyeth. After traveling west in 1919, he settled in Colorado, where the landscape and his journeys through Navajo country inspired his atmospheric depictions of Native American life and the Southwest. In The Strange Moccasin,
the single moccasin in the foreground introduces a quiet sense of mystery and reflection, suggesting themes of solitude, cultural exchange, and movement across tribal boundaries. Delano enhances the painting’s contemplative mood through subtle symbolic details, including the dark horse shielding the figure from the sun, creating a composition rich in narrative depth and quiet humanity.
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Frank's Picks
Frank Hettig | Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art
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Olin Travis traveled widely throughout the Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions, frequently painting directly from nature. His painting Montezuma-Colorado reflects his interest in the dramatic mountain landscapes that complement the Texas and Ozark subjects for which he is best known. His work combines strong academic draftsmanship with a sensitive response to light, atmosphere, and regional landscape. Founded during Colorado's silver boom of the 1860s, Montezuma was once a thriving mining center high in the Rocky Mountains. By the twentieth century, Montezuma's blend of rugged mountain scenery and historic mining architecture made it an appealing subject for artists such as Olin Travis.
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I love the four paintings by John Nieto in this auction. John Nieto's artwork is instantly recognizable for its fearless use of color and unmistakable energy. Rather than striving for realism, Nieto used vibrant, unexpected hues to express the spirit and character of his subjects. His paintings often feature Native American figures, wildlife, and scenes inspired by the American Southwest. Through his unique blend of contemporary expressionism and cultural storytelling, Nieto created works that are both visually striking and deeply personal, inviting viewers to experience familiar subjects in a completely new way.
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Karlyn's Picks
Karlyn Lienhard | Cataloguer, Fine Arts
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Baumann’s Processional woodcut stopped me in my tracks. It is visually captivating and absolutely beautiful, but more than that, it is a work of technical wonder. In his practice, Baumann was heavily influenced by Japanese woodblock cutting techniques including the creation of different carved blocks for distinct areas of color. Baumann was one of the first American-based artists to utilize metallic leaf in his woodcuts and I was even more fascinated to discover this edition is the only one in which he included metallic leaf; the other two editions of Processional have blue skies. Processional
encapsulates the way Baumann transformed the everyday activities and scenes he documented while living in New Mexico, into evocative and beautiful compositions.
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Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s The Sheik with a Red Tree, 2000 fully exemplifies her mature career, whilst recalling deeply personal lived experiences as a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation being raised on the Flathead Reservation. Horses feature prominently throughout Smith’s oeuvre; not only are they resilient, strong, and deeply connected to Smith’s cultural heritage, but more personally, her father was a horse trader. Created in the decade following her seminal series Talking to the Ancestors
(1992), in which she poignantly reflects on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival to the continent, Smith’s vibrant use of red for the tree in this composition, seems to recall the earlier series. Influenced by artists such as Paul Klee, Robert Rauschenberg, and Pablo Picasso as well as traditional Native American Art, Smith combined contemporary Euro-American artistic motifs with traditional symbolic cultural imagery to create raw and beautiful compositions that simultaneously satirized the Euro-American cultural scene while asserting that vitality of contemporary Indigenous American Culture. Smith’s The Sheik with a Red Tree epitomizes her ease of blending mediums and her frequent transformation of animals into symbols.
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Sunday Promenade, 2006 evokes a true sense of artistic nostalgia seen in the artistic greats of Corot, J.M.W. Turner, and French luminaries who lived and painted in the wake of industrialization. What captivates me so much about Sunday Promenade
is that it takes place in a historiated city, rather than the quintessentially "Western" scenes Harvey is so well known for. Despite the compositional and narrative differences, overall, the message is the same. G. Harvey harkens back to an idyllic simplicity of the American past; one augmented by the stories told to him by his own Grandfather. The bustling promenade opens before the viewer. The tall buildings lining the street are decorated with American flags, while hurried families dart between horse-drawn carriages. While an era pre-automobile, the luminosity of the streetlamps and the surrounding city suggest the industrial advancements already at play in urban environments. Harvy depicts the beauty of the early American city just as he creates his Western landscapes; he evokes
a serenity and quiet strength synonymous with the mythos surrounding America's past.
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Find these and other outstanding Western and Texas art in Heritage's Western Art Signature® Auction. The auction's session is at 11:00 AM Central Time, Thursday, June 18.
Sincerely,
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Alissa Ford
Vice President,
American & Western Art
AlissaF@HA.com
(415) 548-5920
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Frank Hettig
Vice President,
Modern & Contemporary Art
FrankH@HA.com
(214) 409-1157
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