The Art and Life of W. Herbert Dunton 1878-1936 [SOLD]

The Art and Life of W. Herbert Dunton 1878-1936 - This is the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work.

By Julie Schimmel

Published for the Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas

By the University of Texas Press, Austin

Hardback with slip cover, first edition,1984, 268 pages. New condition with minor scratches and small tears to slipcover.

“In 1912, William Herbert Dunton gave up a lucrative career as a magazine and book illustrator for New York publishers and moved to Taos, New Mexico, where he founded with five other artists the famed Taos Society of Artists.  From childhood he had been enamored of the West. Born and reared in Maine, Dunton made his first trip west in 1896 when he was just eighteen. While he was eventually to decide that the rigors of cowboy life were too much for him, from this point forward the West would be central to his life and art, so much so that his bride found that her honeymoon suite was a Montana bunkhouse.

Unlike his fellow Taos artists who painted either the Pueblo Inidan or Hispanic people, Dunton stuck with his favorite themes, western ‘old timers’ and wildlife.  In time, his paintings gained a measure of popularity, especially in Texas and Oklahoma, although Dunton collectors were wide-ranging, including Douglas Fairbanks, Franklin Roosevelt, and his most important patron, H. J. Lutcher Stark, of Orange, Texas.  Following Mr. Stark’s death in 1965, his wife, Nelda C. Stark, founded the Stark Museum of Art in Orange. The museum holds the largest collection of Dunton paintings and illustrations.”