The Beating Heart of the West

Collector's Focus: On the Ranch

Where is the West? It’s been said you’ll know when you’re there, but you’ll know more when you’ve left. Essentially, the West is where you want it to be. This sentiment speaks to the larger idea that the American West is a grand place that includes a vast and immeasurable area of land, its people and creatures, its ideas and dreams.

Tom Ryan (1922-2011), White Horns, oil on canvas, 28 x 36 in.

This is all true, but it’s also abstract. So, specifically, where is the West really at? The simplest and most straightforward, and most unequivocable, answer is this: the West is at the ranches that are peppered throughout the country. These are the places where cowboys and cattle, horsemanship and hard work, history and tradition, and the iconography of the West are alive and well. The Western lifestyle is occasionally spoken of as if it were a specimen preserved in a bottle or pinned to a board in a dusty museum case. But it’s a living entity, one that exists in the 21st century. Ranches are where it makes its home, and cowboys subscribe to its tenets.

Legacy Gallery, Roundup, oil, 36 x 36 in., by Billy Schenck.

“To call it a job is inaccurate. Jobs come with regulated hours and a clearly defined description of duties. The cowboy’s job changes daily and ends when it’s over. Cowboys must be comfortable in solitude and capable of working in large groups. They must be extremely proficient at their job because at some point a cow’s life, a horse’s life or the life of another cowboy will depend on it,” filmmaker Taylor Sheridan wrote in Anouk Krantz’s American Cowboys. “One should also flush any stereotypes of the cowboy from their mind. Cowboy is a gender-neutral term and knows no race or ethnicity. Cowboys, like horses and cattle, come in two genders and an assortment of colors. The one color all will share at the end of a long spring gather is dust-covered and sunburned. If a true meritocracy exists on this planet, it exists on a ranch. You will be judged, for certain. From the moment you arrive on the ranch until the moment you leave. You will be judged for your skill. You will be judged for your courage. You will be judged for your humility. You will be judged for your eagerness to open the gate or ride drag or flank, and you will be judged for your hesitance to asking for your chance to drag, even though roping is the reason you were hired onto the branding in the first place.”

Charlie Dye (1906-1972), Maverick, oil on board, 20 x 30 in.; Legacy Gallery, Getting Ahead, oil, 27 x 36 in., by Bill Anton.

He continues, “Cowboys will start work before the sun rises and quit only when told. They will work these seemingly endless hours for wages our government considers illegal. And on the weekends, they will likely ride their horses and rope more steers—the very things they were just underpaid for all week. And they’ll do it for free. Cowboys will break bones, suffer concussions, lose fingers and thumbs, and the notion of doing anything else for a living will never enter their minds. Cowboys do not look at their profession as a career: it is a lifestyle that coincidentally pays. It is self-reliance elevated to an art.”

Peter Hurd (1904-1984), A Ranch on the Plain, tempera on hardboard, 29 ¾ x 47 1⁄8 in.

Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, displays an impressive array of ranch scenery by prominent Western artists. Billy Schenck, for example, is a contemporary artist with work in more than 40 museum and corporate collections. His subject matter spans genres from Western landscape to cowboy Pop Art, witnessed in pieces like Roundup. He has been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe. He is a world champion ranch sorting winner and the proprietor of the Double Standard Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his home for the past two decades.

Additional artists include Bill Anton, who has a love of plein air painting and is inspired by the work of Anders Zorn, Edgar Payne and Frank Tenney Johnson. His piece Getting Ahead illustrates his skill and unique vision of ranch life in the West. Another Legacy Gallery artist, Phil Epp, is known for his depictions of wide-open spaces and the horses, cowboys, Native Americans and prairie creatures that inhabit this empty landscape. For pieces like Sight and Sound,he says, “My paintings reflect this celebration of open sky and landscape, with a hint of human occupation. My intention is to engage the viewer in this isolation, but not dictate response. I strive to incorporate timeless, universal icons into the landscape.”

Top: Legacy Gallery, Sight and Sound, acrylic, 40 x 40 in., by Phil Epp; Phippen Museum, Among the Cottonwoods, oil, 12 x 16 in., by James Andrews. Bottom: Phippen Museum, Misty Morning Light, oil 12 x 16, in., by Dan Knepper.; Phippen Museum, Ready & Waiting, acrylic, 12 x 16 in., by June Dudley.

Phippen Museum’s Hold Your Horses! Invitational Exhibition & Sale, on view through September 29, is about celebrating the heart and soul of ranch life and ranchers’ relationship with horses. “The artists in this show draw from real-life experiences on the range, capturing the dust, sweat and trust between ranchers and horses that define life in the saddle,” says Jeannette Holverson, the museum’s curator and assistant director. “Whether it’s working a cow horse, cutting cattle or a wrangler heading out at sunrise, every piece tells a story rooted in tradition, grit, and the deep connection between people, animals and the land. This exhibition is more than just Western art; it’s a tribute to a way of life that is strongly held in the American West today.”

For collectors, Holverson’s best advice is to “buy the piece that speaks to you. Something that stirs a memory, tells a story or makes you resonate with the artwork on any level.” —