Ray Harm Limited Edition Hand Signed Print "White Breasted Nuthatch". Signed in pencil lower right. In a different tan color limited edition collector print folder, cannot find the information sheet. 19 x 23 1/2 inches.
Edition: 5000 signed
Issue Price: $30
Current Market Value: $175
Condition: Fine condition with envelope and folder
Shipping: Shipped USPS Art Roll Tube with full tracking.
Bio Ray Harm (1927-2015)
Ray Harm is the co-founder of the modern limited edition print industry in
America and has been a nationally known wildlife artist since the 1960's. This
has been documented by the Filson Historical Society' quarterly journal 4/98
Vol.72 No.2.
His parents were both concert violinists in the 1920's so music has been
a significant influence in his life and he learned several instruments from
an early age. Born in the mid twenties in West Virginia (also his father's
native state) Ray's childhood was imbued with his fathers later work and
study as an herbalist and naturalist digging and selling herbs on the
pharmaceutical market. The stock market crash in '29 had forced his father
off of the concert tour and back to West Virginia to an earlier interest in
herbal medicine. The young man was strongly tutored in the ways of nature by
his woodsman/naturalist father.
In his mid teens he went west to work as a cowboy on cattle ranches,
rode the rodeo circuit in the bull and bronc riding events and when he won
enough to purchase a roping horse and trailer, competed as a calf roper. He
even satisfied a dream that many youngsters have by working with the
Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Baily circus, then a tent show, training
horses. Always he sought the outdoor life and work with animals.
Three years of Navy service made him eligible for the GI Bill of World
War II and later, after more cowboying on the ranches, he chose Art School
in 1948. As he puts it "at least some kinda schooling would make my mom
proud." Proud indeed, with only six grades of public school, today he holds
Honorary Doctorate degrees from six colleges and Universities. Making a living as a wildlife artist in the early 1950's
was not easy! This was when limited edition reproduction prints, (as we know
them today), did not yet exist and selling original fine art paintings, one
by one, was a very difficult way to make a living, especially when just out
of art school and unrecognized. It was a struggle for some nine years as he
drew heavily from his earlier "roustabout" experiences to support his
family, training horses, digging ditches on construction jobs and driving
truck while trying to establish himself as an artist.
By 1961 Ray had almost given up when he met Wood Hannah, a Louisville
businessman and art collector. Hannah became personally interested and
together in 1962 they founded a publishing company that was the beginning of
the Limited Edition print industry that opened a market for artists
everywhere. This market today supports thousands of artists through the
medium of Limited Edition prints and Ray is proud of this. The public
acceptance of Ray Harm wildlife prints in an ensuing collection, introduced
in Kentucky, spread rapidly from coast to coast. He was in demand as a
lecturer, wrote a popular weekly nature column and authored two illustrated
books, but his paintings of wildlife remained primary. His pictures are
appreciated for being from living animals and wildflowers, sketched on
location, not copied or traced photographs (which is so commonly done today). All this
coupled with his extensive knowledge of the subjects he paints, he feels, is
more the essence of fine art as opposed to commercial illustration.
Ray has always been physically close to
wildlife, since in his lifetime he has always lived rural. He lived with his wife Cathy
on their H Rafter Ranch in Arizona. Antelope, Bear, Cougar, Bighorn Sheep,
Javelina and a profusion of the bird life of southern Arizona was at his
beck and call.