Maynard Dixon (January 24, 1875 – November 11, 1946) was an
American artist. He was known for his paintings, and his body of work focused
on the American West. Dixon is considered one of the finest artists having
dedicated most of their art to the U.S. Southwestern cultures and landscapes at
the end of the 19th-century and the first half of the 20th-century.
Through his work with the Galerie Beaux Arts, a cooperative
gallery in San Francisco, Dixon played a pivotal role ensuring the West Coast
supported the work of local, modern artists. He was married for a time to
photographer Dorothea Lange, and later to painter Edith Hamlin.
Early life and education
He was born Lafayette Maynard Dixon in Fresno, California,
named after his maternal grandfather. His family of aristocratic Virginia
Confederates had found a new home in California after the American Civil War.
His father was Henry "Harry" St. John Dixon [Wikidata], a former
Confederate officer turned rancher. His mother, Constance Maynard, a
well-educated daughter of a Navy officer from San Francisco, shared her love of
classic literature with the young boy and encouraged him in his writing and
drawing. His brother Harry St. John Dixon [Wikidata] was a metalsmith.
Dixon moved to San Francisco in 1893 and studied with Arthur
Mathews at the California School of Design (now San Francisco Art Institute).
There he became a friend of Tonalist painter Xavier Martinez, with whom he
traveled to Monterey, Carmel, and Point Lobos.
Career
In 1900 Dixon visited Arizona and Mexico, later accompanied
artist Edward Borein on a horseback trip through several western states. Also
he arranged for the debut exhibition of the soon-to-be-famous sculptor Arthur
Putnam in the “jinks room” of the San Francisco Press Club. Dixon's sketching
trip through Arizona and Guadalajara in March and April 1905 with Martinez
garnered much attention in the press. Dixon moved into Martinez's Montgomery
Street atelier; their joint studio exhibitions were usually held on Saturdays.
To insure a steady income, he worked as an illustrator for local newspapers and
magazines (including the Overland Monthly and Sunset magazine), and illustrated
numerous books, such as Clarence E. Mulford’s Hopalong Cassidy.
For his first exhibition in the southwest, Dixon contributed
four oils to the show of Modern Art From The American West curated by the
well-known impressionist Jennie V. Cannon at the University of Arizona in
Tucson in December of 1912.
In 1917, to support America’s entry into World War I, Dixon
joined Lee F. Randolph, Bruce Nelson, and other artists on a committee to
redesign U.S. Army camouflage.
During his tenure in northern California, he was a prolific
contributor to art exhibitions. His first publicized exhibition was a show of
“regional artists” in Alameda, California during the spring of 1899.[5]
Thereafter he exhibited at major venue: California Society of Artists (1902);
Bohemian Club (1903–1928); San Francisco Art Association (1903–1931); Newspaper
Artists League (1903); Press Club (1904); Hotel Del Monte Art Gallery
(1907–1909); Panama–Pacific International Exposition (1915); Gump's gallery
(1920 – solo exhibition); San Francisco Print Rooms (1920 – this show was later
sent to Honolulu); San Francisco's Don Lee Galleries (1923); Oakland Art
Gallery (1926–1928); University of California, Berkeley (1928); California
State Fair (1928); and Golden Gate International Exposition (1939).
Between 1925 and 1933, art dealer Beatrice Judd Ryan ran the
Galerie Beaux Arts in San Francisco, with guidance from Dixon. The Galerie Beaux Arts was the first
contemporary gallery in the city, as well as a cooperative nonprofit, which
supported local modern artists.
In 1926, Dixon was co-curator with Laura Adams Armer for an
exhibit of “Pueblo and Navajo Arts & Crafts” at the Paul Elder Gallery of
San Francisco under the auspices of the Indian Defense Association of Central
and Northern California. In 1927 he joined several prominent artists in a
boycott of the Bohemian Club Annual Exhibition when works of the more “modern”
artists were excluded. During February 1930 he was one of a handful of artists,
which included Ralph Stackpole, Otis Oldfield, Helen Katharine Forbes, and
several others, who contributed to a Galerie Beaux Arts show where the subject
of every painting was the same female model. During the summer of 1931 he
exhibited with the most prominent artists of the west, including William
Ritschel, Armin Hansen, Granville Redmond, and Leland Curtis, at the Tahoe
Tavern on Lake Tahoe. Between 1935 and 1943 he was a member of the Society of
the Thirteen Watercolorists that exhibited at the: San Francisco Museum of Art,
California Palace of the Legion of Honor (museum), Stanford University Art
Gallery; and the de Young Museum.
For a time, he lived in New York with his young wife and
baby daughter Constance, but soon returned to the western United States where
he said he could create "honest art of the west" instead of the
romanticized versions he was being paid to create. Shortly after he began a new
life in San Francisco, his first marriage ended.
Dixon developed his style during this period, and western
themes became a trademark for him. In San Francisco, Dixon was considered a
colorful character with a good sense of humor.[citation needed] He often
dressed like a cowboy and seemed determined to impart a western style, most
often in the form of a black Stetson hat, boots, and a bola tie.
Influenced in part by the Panama Pacific International
Exposition of 1915, Dixon began to search for a new expression, moving away
from impressionism and into a simpler, more modern style. Meeting and marrying
Dorothea Lange, a portrait photographer from the east, had a great influence on
his art. They married in 1920 and by 1925, the year their first son Daniel
Rhodes Dixon was born (15 May), Maynard's style had changed dramatically to
even more powerful compositions, with the emphasis on design, color, and
self-expression. A true modernist emerged. The power of low horizons and
marching cloud formations, simplified, and distilled, became his own brand and
at once were both bold and mysterious. On 12 June 1928, their second son was
born, John Eaglefeather Dixon.
During the Great Depression, Dixon painted a series of
social realism canvases depicting the prevailing politics of maritime strikes,
displaced workers, and those affected by the depression. Simultaneously, Lange
captured on film images of the migrant workers in the Salinas Valley and the
city breadlines, images that eventually brought her fame. In 1933 the Dixons
spent the summer in Zion National Park with sojourns to the hamlet of Mount
Carmel, Utah. Lange was called back to San Francisco, a separation that led to
the couple's divorce in 1935.
Maynard Dixon Home
Two years later, Dixon married San Francisco muralist Edith
Hamlin. The couple left San Francisco two years later for southern Utah, the
source of some of Dixon's greatest art. In 1939, the couple built a summer home
in Mount Carmel, where Dixon found new friends and became reacquainted with the
local natural landscapes. He lived near the cottonwood trees along an old
irrigation ditch and took short hikes to a plateau where he loved the quiet.
Dixon spent winter months in Tucson, where the couple also had a home and
studio. Dixon continued to create simple but powerful compositions in which
non-essential elements were distilled or eliminated. In 1946, Maynard died at
his home in Tucson.[10] In the spring of 1947, his widow Edith brought his
ashes to Mount Carmel where she buried them on a high bluff above the art
studio being built on the property. This had been at his request and she felt
it a fitting tribute where friends could come to pay respects and view the land
that he loved.
In addition to painting, he also wrote poetry. An article in
the California Historical Quarterly described his poetry as "very
competent and sometimes superb".
Legacy
The largest collection of Dixon's works is at Brigham Young
University, at the Museum of Art.
There are two museums devoted to Dixon and his works. The
Maynard and Edith Hamlin Dixon House and Studio, operated by the Thunderbird
Foundation, offers guided tours at Mount Carmel, Utah. The foundation is
working to establish a separate museum and regional art center that would
feature works by Maynard Dixon and his circle, Milford Zornes and his circle,
as well as contemporary work by local artists.
There is a Maynard Dixon Museum inside the Mark Sublette
Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. Works by Dixon include paintings,
watercolors, pastels, drawings, poetry, and illustrations.
The full-length documentary film, Maynard Dixon: Art and
Spirit (2007) was directed by Jayne McKay, and includes candid commentary from
their children and extended family. The television program, Maynard Dixon: To
the Desert Again (2007), was produced by KUED-TV.