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1906 Erwin E. Smith Original Photograph

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Advertising Start Price:250.00 USD Estimated At:500.00 - 1,000.00 USD
1906 Erwin E. Smith Original Photograph
All items sold as is where is. See photos for condition, email info@burleyauction.com or call 830-629-9280 (Prior to sale day) if you have specific condition questions.

Winning bidders will receive an invoice on or before end-of-day Tuesday following the auction.
Erwin E Smith (August 22, 1886 – September 4, 1947) was an American photographer of the West who used the medium to document the waning years of open-range ranching & cowboy life. He was recognized as having "brought together with the camera the most complete account of the passing west that has ever been made." Erwin E. Smith was born in Honey Grove, Texas in 1886. After discovering photography at age 12, and the 1904 World's fair, he later went on to study art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago & at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. While studying, Smith spent his summers photographing on ranches throughout West Texas and parts of New Mexico and Arizona, and by 1911 he had turned his full artistic attention onto photography and returned to Texas to practice in that medium exclusively. His goal was "to do with his photography what Charles M. Russell did with his painting: to maintain a sense of documentary realism by being truthful to the world with work created in an artistically pleasing way." As both a cowhand and photographer, Smith rode with some of the largest outfits in the West. Historic ranches like the Shoe Box, JA, Frying Pan, Matador, and LS Ranches. In 1914 he returned to Texas to begin ranching on his own, but by 1917 he was bankrupt. He spent his remaining years at his home outside Bonham. His photos live on as a visual Time capsule that captures the last of the open range cowboys & ranchers. Framed, 11" x 14"