Artists of the American West : 3 Volume Set (vol I, II & III)

SAGE SWALLOW, 1985-01-01. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Swallow Press, 3 Volume Set. Hard covers. Volume I (ISBN: 0804006075), First Edition, Second Printing, 1980, 275 pp.l Volume II (ISBN: 084003521), First Edition, 1981, 344 pp. ; Volume III (ISBN: 0804008515), 1985, 568 pp. All three volumes in very good condition in very good dust jackets. Black cloth covered boards have light bumping to edges. Binding tight. Previous owner's name stamped in very small lettering on bottom edge of Volume III near spinePages clean and unmarked. Dust jacket has a few small nicks and tears and light creasing along edges. Light overall scuffing to jackets as well. Volume III's jacket has some fading along the spine so that it is slightly discolored. Each jacket now in an archival quality Brodart cover. NOT Ex-Library. No remainder marks. [From jacket flap of Vol. I] As Bernard DeVoto said: "From the early sixteenth century... the West had been strangeness, mystery, and the tug of the unknown . . . Of all the strangelandscapes of America, the most powerfully mysterious, the Far West, had been a compelling force on the imagination for as long as there had been rumor ofit." Beginning in the 1830s, with Catlin and Bodmer and Miller and others, "at last it was realized in paint." Hundreds of artists and illustrators continued toportray the West. There were professionals and amateurs, government survey employees, women and men, European visitors—and cowboys like Charles Russell, "a kid who drew things." The West was loved and longed after and romanticized and misunderstood by the nonWesterner. By the Westerner it was loved and taken for granted. But public popularity of the picturing of the West was along time coming. George Catlin tried unsuccessfully to sell his collection to the U.S. government; even the Americanpeople gave him only lukewarm reception, and he had to go to England for his rightful acclaim. Much later in the19th Century, Russell considered $5 an excellent price for one of his works. And many artists bartered for less: a glass or two of beer.Now the art of the West has come into its own.Russells and Remingtons bring six-figure prices. Major galleries and museums have “special” and permanent collectionsof Western art. Books bothbeautiful and scholarly, treat the subject seriously’ with breadth and depth.]