37

Phippen, George (1916 - 1966)

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:10,000.00 USD Estimated At:10,000.00 - 15,000.00 USD
Phippen, George (1916 - 1966)
<strong>Phippen, George </strong>
(1916 - 1966)

<strong>A Tie Hard in a Storm</strong>

oil on canvas
28 x 36 inches
signed and dated lower left: <i>Geo Phippen / 59 ©</i> with artist's cipher

George Phippen was born in 1916 and grew up on a farm in Kansas. As a child, he
modeled clay figures of animals and cowboys, but did not begin to work seriously with oils and watercolors until the late 1940s. Although Phippen began his career relatively late in life, he found success in the illustration field, creating images for greeting cards and for calendars published by the Brown & Bigelow Company of Minnesota. He moved to Santa Fe and spent several months studying with Henry Balink, honing his skills as an oil painter. Phippen subsequently relocated to Arizona, settling in the Skull Valley with his wife and five children. Along with his brother, Harold, he began a small art foundry named the Bear Paw Bronze Works, which helped to revive and popularize the lost wax casting process. In 1965, at the Oak Creek Tavern in Sedona, Phippen
co-founded the Cowboy Artists of America along with Charlie Dye, Joe Beeler, and John Hampton. Phippen served as the organization’s first president, but died the following year at the age of 50. The George Phippen Memorial Foundation was established in 1974, and in 1984 the George Phippen Museum opened in Prescott, Arizona.

Phippen’s painting <i>A Tie Hard in a Storm</i> is a prime example of the artist’s work in the classic action-oriented Western vein pioneered by Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington. As a founding member of the Cowboy Artists of America, Phippen helped to create and popularize the cowboy art aesthetic that continues to enjoy great popularity to this day. Rather than romanticized historical subjects, Phippen preferred painting contemporary cowboy life, sometimes focusing on quiet day-to-day activities and other times on dramatic moments of excitement and danger. - DC


Provenance:
The Artist
Private Collection, New Mexico, acquired circa 1960