Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over Sandusky's left shoulder.
Alternate Title(s):Barroom Gunfight; Gunfight
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1915
Dimensions:
34 × 24 15/16 in. (86.4 × 63.3 cm)
Denver Art Museum Collection: William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen Collection, 2001.443
Accession number: SUPP2000.468
Research Number: NCW: 468
InscribedLower right: N. C. WYETH (underlined); on reverse of canvas: GUNFIGHT / 6218; Scribner's Magazine label ("This copyrighted picture is the property of...") with "W13799" stamped across label; Coe Kerr Gallery label
ProvenanceThe artist (returned to him from Scribner's, 1/10/1917, #B10000); Mrs. N. C. Wyeth, to at least 1950; (?); Greenwood Bookstore, Wilmington, DE, ca. 1965 - 1968; Mr. and Mrs. William D. Harmsen, 1968-2001
Exhibition HistoryHarrisburg, PA, 1965, no. 31, as "Barroom Gunfight"; Wilmington, DE, 1966, no. 8, as "Illustration of the Man of Music Mountain"; Lubbock, TX, (Jolly Roger Foundation, organizer) Museum of Texas Tech University, "Harmsen's Western Americana, Jan. 24 - March 7, 1976; Cody, WY, 1980, p. 56, illus. plate 12, as "Gunfight"; Chadds Ford, PA, 1990(2), illus. in color p. 45, cat. no. 43 on p. 83 and p. 75; Washington, DC, The Trust for Museum Exhibitions (organizer), The American West, Out of Myth Into Reality, 3 venues circulating during 2000 (Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson; Terra Museum of Art, Chicago; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo), p. 90, number 60, as "Gunfight"; Denver, CO, Denver Art Museum, May 27-Sept. 27, 2017, "The Western: An Epic in Art and Film;" Montreal, Canada, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Oct. 14, 2017-Feb. 4, 2018, "Once Upon a Time...The Western"
References
Richard Layton, "Inventory of Paintings in the Wyeth Studio, 1950," unpublished, Wyeth Family Archives, p. 41; Dorothy Harmsen, Harmsen's Western Americana (Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Press, 1971), color illus. p. 205; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), p. 218; Alexander Nemerov, "N. C. Wyeth's Theater of Illustration," American Art Magazine, vol. 6, no. 2 (Spring 1992), ps. 37, 40, 42, and illus. in color p. 38 fig. 1; R. E. Mather and F. E. Boswell, Gold Camp Desperadoes / A Study of Violence, Crime and Punishment on the Mining Frontier (Norman, OK: University of OK Press, 1993), cover illus. in color; Peter H. Hassrick, "The American West: Out of Myth, Into Reality," American Art Review, vol. Xll, no. 6 (Nov.-Dec. 2000), illus. p. 202; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), I.569, p. 307
Curatorial RemarksThe Scribner's edition was published in April, 1916, the same month Everybody's Magazine concluded their four-month serialization of the story with illustrations by Charles Sarka (1879-1960).
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Transparency directly from painting
Photo Credit:Courtesy of Denver Art Museum