183 Maynard Dixon -The Sheriff Rides

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Winning Bid Undisclosed
This item SOLD at 2018 Apr 07 @ 13:14UTC-7 : PDT/MST
Category Art
Auction Currency USD
Start Price NA
Estimated at 30,000.00 - 50,000.00 USD
The Sheriff Rides
Artist: Maynard Dixon
Date of Birth: 1875-1946
Medium: Oil on board
Dimensions: 28 x 19 inches
Signed: Signed lower left and dated 1912
Verso:
Frame/Outer Dim: 28 x 38
Caption: “Bob McGraw laughed and drew his gun. ‘I’d ride to hell for you,’ he muttered joyously, and sank the rowels home in Friar Tuck.”
Bob McGraw, the “Leading Man” in author Peter Kyne’s “The Long Chance,” a Western novel serialized in Sunset Magazine, is the subject of Maynard Dixon’s brawny and moody action painting. Here’s how Kyne describes him: “He was tall enough but his hair was not crisp and curly and golden. Most people would have called it red. Not, praise be, a carroty red, a dull negative, scrubby red, but a nicer red than that–dark auburn, in fact… In but one particular did he resemble the dream man. He did have a cleft in his chin… The only thing romantic and–er–literary about Bob McGraw was his Roman-nosed mustang, Friar Tuck–so called because he had been foaled and raised on a wooded range near Sherwood in Mendocino County.” Bob McGraw’s lady love is Donna Corblay. His rival for her affections is the wealthy Gerald Van Alstyne. At the moment of the painting, McGraw has spotted Donna riding her velocipede (that’s bicycle to you) out of town. And, of course, she has just been accosted by three men. And, of course, Bob, true natural knight of the range that he is, rides to her rescue. Dixon wisely sculpts the hero and his steed out of flowing mooncast shadows, thereby allowing the viewer to create and project a persona onto Kyne’s classic protagonist.