2025 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction50 / 120 • View Catalog •
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In discussing this sculpture, the artist wrote: “Clayton Danks, who I show winning the world championship on Steamboat in Two Champs was high sheriff of Fremont County, the second largest in Wyoming, for sixteen years. He was general manager of a big cow outfit in the badlands – outlaw country south of Baggs, Wyoming – for many years before that, and he was one of the best bronc riders and steer ropers for twenty years starting at the turn of the century. In those days they rode broncs until they stopped bucking.… I want to show that you can’t ‘fit a ride’ like that without finding the horse’s center, and you can’t get in the horse’s center except through your own. You must go into where both centers are one. The moment they become two, you’re in orbit. It is a necessary point to find in this ever-faster world we live in today.”
Clayton Danks was named Champion Bronc Rider of the World at Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1907 when he successfully rode Steamboat, perhaps the most famous bucking bronc in the history of rodeo. At Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1909 Danks again won first prize and was awarded this H. H. Heiser saddle for his trophy.
PROVENANCE [Clayton Danks Saddle]
Joseph Lynde, Wyoming, ca. 1970s
John Japp Auctioneers, Casper, Wyoming, 2006
Private collection, Wyoming
