2017 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 38
38
E. William Gollings (1878 – 1932)
Day Herder (1923)
oil on canvas
10 × 7 inches
signed and dated lower right
In his autobiography Gollings wrote, “Spring came and I wanted to punch cows, but I had no outfit. I took a sheep herding job about ninety miles north of Belle Fourche. By September, I had enough money coming to me to have a tooth pulled and buy an outfit, which I did, and straightaway got a job with a cow outfit in the Slim Buttes country. All this country was worth living in; there were antelope in abundance on the prairie and deer in the hills besides wolves and coyotes aplenty. It all seemed a paradise to me. The whole country seemed to belong to the big cow outfits alone; there were very few sheep and horses and the grass waved over all this land.”