Maynard Dixon

(1875-1946)

Land Westward 25 x 30in framed 31 x 35 1/2in

Footnotes

Provenance
Gumps Gallery, San Francisco, California, 1946.
J.N. Bartfield Galleries, New York, New York.
Sale, Christie's, Los Angeles, California and American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, November 16, 2005, lot 21.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Literature
W. Burnside, Maynard Dixon: Artist of the West, Provo, Brigham Young University Press, 1974, p. 181.
D. J. Hagerty, Desert Dreams: The Art of Maynard Dixon, Layton, Utah, Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2010, no. 194, p. 223, illustrated.

Listed as #561 on Maynard Dixon's master painting list.

From early in his career, Dixon objected to dramatizing depictions of the Western way of life. The Western genre was initially built upon sensationalizing the struggles of the frontier, particularly the clashes between settlers and the native tribes which were frequent themes of works by Dixon's hero, Frederic Remington. Being born and raised in the region gave Dixon a notably different perspective on the Old West. Having lived and worked with the cowboys, traders, and Native Americans he portrayed; Dixon preferred to depict the daily tribulations people faced with halcyon dignity. As in the present work, Land Westward, amidst the vast landscape is a solitary wrangler with a few head of horses moving unhurriedly across the expanse. This lone figure is dwarfed by the land behind and sky above, enveloped by the solitude and grandeur of the seemingly endless landscape.

Maynard Dixon said, "My object has always been to get close to the real nature of my subject as possible — people, animals and country. The melodramatic Wild West idea is not for me the big possibility. The nobler and more lasting qualities are in the quiet and most broadly human aspects of western life. I aim to interpret, for the most part, the poetry and pathos of the life of western people, seen amid the grandeur, sternness and loneliness of their country." ¹

Painted at the apex of his prowess as a painter, Land Westward epitomizes Maynard Dixon's mature style with hard lines, flat planes of color, and strong horizontal elements. Here he has reduced the striations of the scene to their simplest forms and composition is dominated by bands of color. Alternating browns, whites and ochres depict the thin brush in the immediate foreground with undulations of yellow and orange in the plains immediately behind the equestrian group. Plateaus at the horizon line are articulated with a few thin brushes of steel blue and nutmeg, while a flat skyline of cornflower blue indicates a distant mountain range. The remaining upper two-thirds of the canvas is a smooth gradient from pale blue to faded denim of cloudless sky.

Dixon's biographer comments, "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,' [Dixon] 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.'" <sup>2

1</sup> M. Dixon, as quoted by W. Hall, "The Art of Maynard Dixon", Sunset Magazine, January 1921, pp. 44-45.
² D.J. Hagerty, Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon, Utah, 1993, p. 5.