2026 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction15 / 80 • View Catalog •
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Titled
Reflecting on Delano’s place in Western art history, collector Richard G. Bowman observed, “Gerard Curtis Delano occupies a special place in Western art history, alongside those who found the challenge of a lifetime in observing and painting the American West firsthand, and specialized in depicting the American Indians. We can define stages between the late 1800s and the present in paintings and sculptural renditions of the Indians. When we consider these from the vantage point of the last decade of the twentieth century, Delano begins to loom large as the successor to Remington and Russell.”
By the early 1920s, Delano had begun receiving assignments for magazine illustrations depicting the West. Returning from Colorado, he established a studio on East 57th Street in New York, where publications such as Collier’s and Cosmopolitan soon began to carry his work. “It was during this period that Delano absorbed influences from several great teachers who had a bearing on the evolution of his career. We learn from his autobiography that he studied at the Art Students League with Frank DuMond, and at the Grand Central School of Art with Harvey Dunn and N. C. Wyeth.”
In 1933, as the effects of the Great Depression deepened, Delano returned to Colorado to pursue a career in fine art while continuing his work in illustration. “Delano’s break came within a few years, when, in 1936, he signed the contract with Street and Smith Publishers for the series of stories and drawings, ‘Story of the West.’ … The end of the ‘Story of the West’ series in 1940, seemed to mark a turning point in Delano’s life. At last he was able to fulfill his great desire to concentrate on easel painting.”
PROVENANCE
Dr. Ward Darley, Denver, Colorado, ca. 1950s
Present owner, by descent
