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According to art historian Michael R. Grauer, “Eadweard Muybridge revolutionized the depictions of running horses in world art when he published The Horse in Motion in 1878. This series of photographs taken of racehorse Sallie Gardner at Palo Alto, California, provided a template for Western American artists in particular. In 1889, Frederic Remington’s masterpiece, A Dash for the Timber (Amon Carter Museum), set the standard for all who followed. Remington relied on Muybridge’s photographs (and his own) to create a dynamic image of running horses at all angles (including full-frontal with forehooves reaching almost out of the picture plane). But Remington did not simply ape photography: as an artist he created a dynamic composition where all the horses seem suspended in mid-air, all hooves off the ground, but used the white horse as a pictorial marker in this genius composition.

“From 1903 to 1907, Remington was under contract to Collier’s magazine to create one painting per month for reproduction in color in the center of the magazine; a centerfold. These reproductions were also sold separately as high end ‘prints.’ W. Herbert Dunton’s A Race for the Chuckwagon was reproduced in color in Collier’s magazine in April 1912, also as a centerfold.

“At Remington’s sudden death in 1909, Dunton was asked to continue illustrating for Cosmopolitan magazine a serialized autobiography (originally begun by Remington) of Civil War and Indian Wars hero General Nelson A. Miles. American Art News (September 1913) noted that Dunton was ‘succeeding the late Frederick [sic] Remington as a cowboy painter.’ And the Kansas City Star (September 28, 1917) reported that Dunton was ‘the first man who has shown symptoms of being qualified to occupy the position left vacant by Remington’ and that he possessed ‘the … ability to carry on the work where Remington left off.’

“After working in a clothing store in Boston, Dunton itched to go west and set out in the summer of 1896 ‘with a few things in a bag and a new Winchester.’ Stopping at Broken Bow, Nebraska, he continued on to Livingston, Montana. While Dunton made a number of trips west between 1896 and 1911, the specific details of his travels remain ambiguous. He recalled in a 1914 New York Sun article that he had ‘been on three cow outfits in [Park and Musselshell counties, Montana], and on one in Oregon … also worked in the cattle country of Wyoming, on two outfits in Colorado, in Mexico, and spent two years in the greatest cattle country of New Mexico.’ He thought he ‘wanted to be a cow boy [sic] … But … [l]ong hours, hard work, sorry grub and sorry pay, and – no future’ cured him. Plus, he always said he made a sorry ‘puncher’ as he couldn’t ‘rope a sick chicken with its legs hobbled.’

“Dunton’s A Race for the Chuckwagon is a distillation of his personal experiences in cow camps as well as a synthesis of other sources including artists and popular culture. Remington’s A Dash for the Timber and Muybridge’s photographs were clearly on Dunton’s mind as he composed his A Race for the Chuckwagon.

“Dunton insisted upon appropriate clothing and accoutrements in his paintings, although he never descended into accuracy for its own sake. In A Race for the Chuckwagon all these ‘hands’ are clearly Northern Plains cowboys, save the puncher on the white horse sporting shotgun chaps with fringes and firing his ‘Colt’s six shooter’ in the air (the only cowboy in the painting to show any ‘artillery’). His square-skirted, double-rigged saddle with tapaderos gives him away as probably a ‘Texan’ given the known ‘wildness’ of Lone Star State cowboys and their willingness to ‘onlimber’ their firearms at the drop of a hat! The other cowboys wear either woolly chaps or no chaps and the nearest hand rides what appears to be a California (Visalia) tree, center-fire rigged, round-skirted saddle. All the Northern hands use buckaroo-style bridles, bits, and reins. The closest cowboy may also have a horsehair hitched and braided bridle and reins on his cow pony.

“The competition has turned fierce between the second rider from left and the fourth, with the latter perhaps ‘whipping’ the former with the loop of his reata to gain advantage in the ‘race.’ The second rider’s turn of the head back towards his tormentor may be a subtle nod to Remington’s desperate riders in A Dash for the Timber, some of whom glance back at the oncoming Apaches.

“Dunton saturated this composition with ‘high-noon’ lighting and the ‘glare aesthetic’ for which he was praised in the mid ‘teens. His heavy-impastoed foreground lends texture and grit to this stop-action scene. Furthermore, Dunton captures perfectly the fine alkaline dust raised in perhaps the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming or eastern Oregon.

“W. Herbert Dunton’s A Race for the Chuckwagon is one of his finest paintings of cowboy life in the American West. He condensed the ‘teachings’ of one of his idols into this masterpiece and relied on the expectations of a public for cowboy behavior to direct his creative trail. This painting would make an exceptional addition to any collection of art of the American West.”

PROVENANCE
Edward S. Toothe, Linden, New Jersey, ca. 1930s
Present owner, by descent

EXHIBITED
Paintings of the Old West, Panhandle Cattlemen’s Association Convention, El Paso, Texas, 1914

LITERATURE
Collier’s, April 20, 1912, p. 10, illustrated

Condition ReportSurface is in good condition. Canvas is mounted to board. scattered Spots of inpainting.

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.