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KENNETH RILEY (1919 – )

Currency:USD Category:Pottery & Glass / Glass Start Price:1,250.00 USD Estimated At:2,500.00 - 3,500.00 USD
KENNETH RILEY (1919 – )
KENNETH RILEY (1919 – )
Hitching Post
Gouache on Paper, 4 3/4" x 6 1/4"
signed lower right
A realist painter of the Old West and a highly successful illustrator, Ken Riley was born
in Waverly, Missouri, in 1919 and has had a studio in Tucson, Arizona from 1971. He was
raised in Kansas and received his art education at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he was a
student of Thomas Hart Benton. In 1941, Riley went to New York to study with Frank DuMond
at the Art Students League. He also took evening classes at the Grand Central School of Art
with illustrator Harvey Dunn. After World War II, he returned to illustration, contributing
to magazines including National Geographic and the Saturday Evening Post. President John F.
Kennedy chose one of Riley's paintings for the White House collection. He went on painting
trips to Yellowstone and the Tetons and taught at Brigham Young University in Utah. Ken
was so taken with the intensity of the lights that he was determined to move west. In 1982
he was elected to the Cowboy Artists of America, an exclusive group of painters and sculptors
dedicated to western art in the tradition of Charles Russell and Frederic Remington.