2015 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 17443 / 290  •  View Catalog  •   • 

174
Maynard Dixon (1875 – 1946)
Flathead Brave (1909)
oil on board
10.75 × 13.75 inches
signed and dated lower left

Dixon historian Donald J. Hagerty wrote, “Sometime in the late spring of 1909, Maynard received an invitation from Dr. Charles Stuart Moody, a doctor at the Indian Agency in Sandpoint, Idaho, who had expressed admiration for his work. Would he like to visit and paint among Plains Indians and participate in a cattle drive? In late June, Maynard arrived on a Great Northern train at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. This was country very different from the arid Southwest with its cool green colors and vast pine forests. With Moody as his guide, Maynard fished in Lake Pend Oreille, visited ‘old timers’ and homesteaders in their log cabins, camped with Nez Perce and Kootenai Indians, then traveled into the plains of western Montana to St. Ignatius Mission, on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Maynard enjoyed his rides over the open prairie. It was, he thought, ‘not strange—old as the world, yet created only this morning.’ This was the northern plains, treeless, trackless, reaching away in long slow undulations to a limitless horizon. No track, no trail, no fence—only the endless green and brown grass under his horse’s hooves. Now so empty, once it had been buffalo land, and here and there lay reminders, buffalo horns, gray and weathered, in the grass.”

PROVENANCE
The Estate of Robert M. Scriver, Browning, MT
Private Collection

LITERATURE
Larry Len Peterson, The Call of the Mountains: The Artists of Glacier National Park (Tucson, AZ: Settlers West Galleries, 2002), page 133, illustrated

174

Maynard Dixon

1875 – 1946

Flathead Brave (1909)
oil on board
10.75 × 13.75 inches
signed and dated lower left
Sold at Auction: $90,000
Condition ReportSurface condition excellent. One small spot of inpainting upper right corner at edge of frame, one small spot lower left corner at edge of frame, one small spot bottom center, and one small spot lower right quadrant.

Important Notice: Statements of condition are provided as a service to potential bidders; such statements are educated opinions and should not be regarded as facts. The Coeur d’Alene Art Auction has no responsibility for any errors or omissions.