An Introduction

Welcome to a conversation about all things Western, Wildlife and Sporting Art.  It's a conversation, so be sure to make comments!  Let me know what you like, dislike, what questions you may have, and the stronger the opinion, the better.  As The Western Art Dealer, I will be, as someone so eloquently put it, "spewing Western art knowledge".  I want to share what I know with you in hopes of building appreciation for a genre of art that is undervalued.  Whether you're a collector, dealer, artist, or any combination of the 3, join the conversation as we explore the growing world of Western, Wildlife, and Sporting Art.  You're not going to find any works of art that look like my 3-year old son dropped his palette on then walked on it and titled it "Baba Ganoush" because it's fun to say.  We're talking about real art that takes talent and skill.  Art that portrays a way of life.  We're talking about the work of deceased artists whose art is significant to American History, and the artists that follow in their footsteps today.

I'm talking about artists like Charles Russell, Frederic Remington, Carl Rungius, the Taos Society of Artists (Joseph Sharp, E. Martin Hennings, E. Irving Couse, Oscar Berninghaus, Bert G. Phillips, Ernest Blumenschein, Walter Ufer, W. Herbert Dunton, Victor Higgins, and Kenneth Adams).  Not to mentions other Taos artists like Nicholai Fechin, Gene Kloss, and Leon Gaspard.  We're going to discuss important Montana artists like John Fery, Edgar Paxson, Olaf C. Seltzer, Winold Reiss, William Standing and Bob Scriver.  We can't forget about Maynard Dixon, Edward Borein, Nick Eggenhofer, W.H.D. Koerner, William Leigh, Conrad Schwiering, E. William Gollings, and Olaf Wieghorst.  If you like Wildlife and Sporting art, you're going to love the discussions about Philip Goodwin, Frank Stick, Ogden Pleissner, David Maass, Belmore Browne, George Browne, Hans Kleiber and Frank Benson.  We can't leave out the important Alaskan artists like Sydney Laurence, Ted Lambert, Eustace Ziegler, Fred Machetanz, and Jules Dahlager.  There are so many more, but I don't want to bore you by listing a million artists.  Just know that we're going to cover artists that have an actual market for their work.

If that wasn't enough, we're also going to discuss the artists that are leading the genre today, the western Auction world, Museums dedicated to Western, Wildlife, and Sporting art, building a collection with lasting value, selling/buying art, art law, and evaluating your art.  I invite you to 'follow' me on a journey through the Western art landscape wearing cowboy boots, eating lamb chops, and drinking free beer provided by the auction houses while we spend tens of thousands of dollars on paintings that our children probably won't like, so we'll have to sell it all before we die so our kids don't give it away for pennies on the dollar.