Page 112 - 2019 Russell Catalogue

147
HAROLD VON SCHMIDT (1893–1982)
For Jim Had Also Fallen for Lively Kate’s Blue Eyes, Sunny Hair, and Good Nature
oil
31 x 40 inches
$15,000–20,000 PROVENANCE
• Private collection, Colorado PUBLICATION
• Saturday Evening Post, December 2, 1944, p. 28.
Relatively early in his career, Harold von Schmidt signed on to model for the San Francisco-based artist Maynard Dixon to gain advice and lessons from the person he described as “one of the best painters in California at that time.” Through this arrangement, he came to know and be influenced by a number of other prominent artists, including Ed Borein, Charles Russell, and Will James.
He subsequently moved to Westport, Connecticut, and became a highly accomplished illustrator for Esquire, Cosmopolitan, McLeans, and The Saturday Evening Post. For a period, he also studied under Harvey Dunn, who in turn had studied under the legendary Howard Pyle. In a biography by Walt Reed, von Schmidt stated, “Although I have lived and painted in the East for forty-five years, I still think as a Western man....”
For many, the artist is best known and revered for his outstanding works depicting a wide range of Western tales in the Saturday Evening Post. Lot 147 serves as an outstanding example of that legacy of memorable images. In the December 2, 1944, issue of Saturday Evening Post, For Jim Had Also Fallen ... was used as illustration for a short story titled All Forty-Five. The subheading for the work of fiction by Ray Palmer Tracy sets the stage: “With winter coming on, driving steers over the mountains was a job fit only for a madman—or a man as desperate as Jim Kelly.”1
Turk Blaine, the old, grizzled owner of the Rafter-M cow outfit, gave hard-working cowhand Jim Kelly the impossible task of bringing home fifty head through a tangle of mountains before the snow flies. As an added appeal to the story, Jim was interested in Turk’s daughter Kate. The caption of the image in All Forty-Five serves as the title of the piece, For Jim Had Also Fallen for Lively Kate’s Blue Eyes, Sunny Hair, and Good Nature.
The heart of the story presents all the nail-biting drama readers expected from periodical works of fiction so popular at the time. Through an untimely storm, treacherous topography, and other seemingly insurmountable odds, Jim Kelly makes it out of the mountains and fulfills his assignment.
“Well, Jim,” he [Turk] said, “I see you fetched every one—all forty-five. But where’n hell have you been?”
“Got hung up a spell by the weather,” explained Jim.2
1 Ray Palmer Tracy, All Forty-Five (Saturday Evening Post: December 2, 1944), 28. 2 Ibid., 36.