226 Storyteller of the Cliffs

Category Art
Auction Currency USD
Start Price 17,500.00 USD
Estimated at 35,000.00 - 50,000.00 USD
Storyteller of the Cliffs
Artist: Cassidy, GeraldDate of Birth: 1869-1934
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 17 x 10 inches
Signed: Signed lower right
Verso:

The inscription on the stretcher refers to the mural Cliff Dwellers of the Southwest, painted by Cassidy for the Indian Arts Building at the 1915 Panama-California International Exposition in San Diego. Cassidy won the Gold Medal for this mural and the publicity he garnered launched the most successful phase of his career. Storyteller of the Cliffs strikes the eye with a classical, almost Olympian beauty. Already high above the clouds, the teller, naked to the waist, points to a place even higher, the site of some contact between god and god, or between god and human. Diffuse sunlight on windblown white robes—is this a rite of purification?—makes Greek or Roman draperies out of the simple cloth the listeners are wrapped—and rapt—in. Is this a real place or a place—some palace of mind or memory— that the story has conjured?