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McCarthy, Frank (b. 1924)

Currency:USD Category:Art Start Price:100,000.00 USD Estimated At:100,000.00 - 130,000.00 USD
McCarthy, Frank (b. 1924)
<strong>McCarthy, Frank </strong>
(b. 1924)

<strong>On the Old North Trail, 1989</strong>

oil on canvas triptych
24 x 20 inches; 24 x 40 inches;
24 x 20 inches
signed and dated lower left: <i>McCarthy CA / © 1989</i>
signed and dated lower left: <i>McCarthy / CA © 1989</i>
signed and dated lower right: <i>McCarthy / CA © 1989

Frank McCarthy was born in New York City in 1924 and discovered his artistic talent early in life. A precocious teenager, McCarthy was accepted into the Art Students League summer program at the age of fourteen. There he learned the rudiments of drawing and composition from renowned
anatomy teacher George Bridgeman and Depression-era artist Reginald Marsh. After high school, McCarthy earned an illustration degree at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

In 1949 he took an extended trip across the western region of Canada and America and amassed a library of sketches and photographs he referred to throughout his career. His initial commercial success came as a freelance artist for American Weekly. A steady stream of work ensued in the 1950s, with commissions from <i>Colliers, American Magazine, Outdoor Life, Cosmopolitan,
Redbook, Reader's Digest,</i> and others. Encouraged by his friend and former colleague Charlie Dorsa, McCarthy sent two paintings to a New York gallery which sold immediately. By 1971, he had abandoned illustration work to devote himself to fine-art painting with historical associations. He is now widely recognized as one of the most accomplished painters of Western subjects working today.

<i>On the Old North Trail</i> demonstrates McCarthy's particular talent for capturing the fleeting effects of light on desert rock formations. Of this painting Elmer Kelton writes, "In the long, dark shadows and the gold of early-morning sunshine rides a Blackfoot raiding party bearing the markings of war. The Blackfeet were particularly fierce in defense of their Canadian
border homeland. The Old North Trail began in Alberta. Raiders of various tribes followed it as far
south as Mexico.”—KK


Provenance:

Private Collection, California

Literature:

Catalog, <i>Cowboy Artists of America, Twenty-Fourth Annual Exhibitioin 1989,</i>
Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Publishing, 1989, illus. center image only.
Elmer Kelton, <i>The Art of Frank C. McCarthy,</i> Trumbull, Connecticut: The
Greenwich Workshop, Inc., 1992, pp.2-3, illus. p. 108, 128