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Lonesome Trail

Currency:USD Category:Western Americana Start Price:NA Estimated At:40,000.00 - 60,000.00 USD
Lonesome Trail
Lonesome Trail
Artist: Wieghorst, OlafDate of Birth: 1899-1988
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 20 x 24 inches
Signed: Signed lower left

After leaving the U.S. Cavalry, Olaf Wieghorst spent the next couple of years as a cowboy in the classic sense, moving from ranch to ranch on either side of the border between New Mexico and Arizona. Wieghorst frequented rugged, not-yet-civilized towns like Mogollon and Silver City and what is now the ghost town of Alma, New Mexico. Wieghorst spent the longest stretch working for a man named Elton Cunningham on his Quarter Circle 2C Ranch. This brand, it should be noted, appears on many of the artistÕs works, attesting to the impact this experience made on his painting. Cunningham had a bad temper and a worse reputation with his neighbors. He had hired and befriended Butch Cassidy and some of the Hole In The Wall Gang, and had even hidden some of the outlawÕs loot after a railroad heist. For awhile anyway, Wieghorst was able to keep an uneasy peace with Cunningham, absorbing and sketching the cowboy way. Lonesome Trail depicts the area around Mogollon, near the Cunningham Ranch; in the loneÑand lonesomeÑcowboy, Wieghorst captures the forbidding aspects of the landscape and elements. Even the shadows a man and his horses cast are weak. If your horse took a wrong step, and you tumbled over the cliff and vanished, who would ever know?