BEELER, Joe. Cowboys and Indians. Characters in Oil and Bronze
Item #4558
80 plate pages with facing text, 8vo; bound in full brown leather; cover decoration & spine stamped in gilt; slipcase; original water color on limitation page; color and b&w reproductions of paintings, drawings, bronzes throughout. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, [1967]. No. 128/200 copies signed by Beeler, with an original watercolor of a mountain man. Additionally inscribed, "To Jim with my best." Born 1931, in Joplin, MO, of Indian descent, his father being part Cherokee, Joe Beeler's earliest recollections had to do with becoming an artist, according to Joe De Yong's brief prefatory sketch. He grew up among the Indian tribes of northeastern Oklahoma where horsemanship and hunting were a way of life, providing the source of ideas and inspiration for his paintings, illustrations and sculpture. Beeler attended the University of Tulsa to study with the "artist of the dust bowl" Alexandre Hogue until two years of service in the Korean War during which he did artwork for Stars & Stripes magazine. He later worked in "Fats" Jones's Hollywood stables decorating Western movie props and studied at the Los Angeles Art Center School. In 1958, with his wife and first child, Beeler moved into a cabin on Indian land in northeast Oklahoma to devote himself to work in fine arts with Western subjects, regardless of the difficult odds of making a living. He survived by painting bull and cow portraits and with book illustrations until his one-man show in 1960. Thereafter, his reputation grew, "rabbit and quail gave way to beefsteak" at the dinner table, and by 1965 his paintings were on commission only. He also began sculpting in bronze that year, and would go on to found the Cowboy Artists of America with Charlie Dye, George Phippen, and John Hampton. Fine. |
