2023 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 63
VERSO
Label, Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York
According to Western art historian Dr. Larry Len Peterson, “More readers of Western stories in the 1920s and 1930s saw Nick Eggenhofer’s illustrations than almost any other artist. At the turn of the century, nickel and dime novels were slowly edged out by pulp magazines with their colored pictorial wraps. At their peak, more than 300 pulp magazines were in circulation in the 1920s. The king of pulp illustration was a young man who grew up in the Bavarian Alps of Germany.
“Young Bavarian children such as Eggenhofer enjoyed playing ‘Trappers and Indians’ and reading about the exploits of Buffalo Bill Cody in Buffalo Bill Weekly magazine as his show dazzled Europeans across the continent. Likewise, Hollywood silent Westerns with German subtitles romanticized the American West to a young boy who didn’t speak English. Soon, he was off to America.”
PROVENANCE
Sotheby’s, New York, New York, 1992
Private collection, Houston, Texas