William Herbert Dunton, (1878-1936)

Delivering the Mail 30 x 25in framed 39 1/2 x 34 1/2in

Delivering the Mail
signed 'W. Herbert Dunton' (lower left)
oil on canvas
30 x 25in
framed 39 1/2 x 34 1/2in
Painted circa 1915.

Provenance
Zaplin-Lampert Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Medicine Man Gallery, Inc., Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

We wish to thank Michael Grauer, W. Herbert Dunton Chair at the Lunder Research Center at the Couse-Sharp Historic Site in Taos, New Mexico, for his kind assistance with cataloging this lot.

Grauer writes about Delivering the Mail, in a letter dated July 1, 2021, "Between 1912 and 1920 in the Taos area, Dunton posed and painted en plein air alone or in groups cowboys/cowgirls/vaqueros or American Indians. A subgroup of this series clearly shows the influence of Frederic Remington's work depicting night scenes--called nocturnes--particularly those paintings wherein Remington did not use a dramatic artificial light source, but rather showed the effects of moonlight on all color. Delivering the Mail is one of Dunton's group of nocturnes including The Night Guard; The Horse Rustler; The Night Watch; The Vidette; The Reconnaissance; and Above the Bed Ground.

The paintings in this 'series' also exhibit the same expressive brushwork and heavy impasto, characteristics Dunton learned from the American Impressionists whose work he saw in Boston and New York from 1903 to 1915. Moreover, the impressionists sought to depict nature and figures in different atmospheric and weather conditions and different times of day, including snow scenes at night as seen in Delivering the Mail.

Having been a studio painter formerly, Dunton promoted his role as a plein-air--and therefore avant-garde—painter after 1912. The New York Herald (1914) reported that 'he paints right out of doors - begins, finishes and even signs his paintings out in the open.' And Scribner's (1916) noted that Dunton 'believes in painting direct from nature, and spares himself no trouble to get his effects, setting forth at times with models and half a dozen ponies . . . to paint them in a windstorm, with his canvas anchored against the stiff breeze by big boulders.' Dunton's rendering of snow in the foreground of Delivering the Mail demonstrate how he toyed with the dissolution of forms through dynamic brushwork and heavy impasto, common to impressionist painting.

In her 1985 monograph on Dunton, Julie Schimmel wrote: '...when Dunton portrayed women of the West, he made a more singular contribution... as [Western women] independently took on the West.' Delivering the Mail is one of those 'singular contributions' depicting Western women '... in gunfights and on bucking broncos, and [riding] herd.' And they delivered the mail during a blizzard.

Delivering the Mail may, in fact, be a reminiscence for Dunton. He and his new bride, Nellie Hartley, shared a cow-camp cabin in Montana in 1901 (where she cooked for the cowboys) and she found her way back from town with supplies during a blizzard. However, while the story may be Nellie's, the model for Delivering the Mail may have been Lillian Barron who also posed for another Dunton nocturne snow scene with a cowgirl, The Lonely Vigil, which he exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1913. (The Lonely Vigil bears a striking resemblance to Remington's The Scout: Friends or Enemies?). Yet, in 1915, Nellie's younger sister, Ada, visited them in Taos, New Mexico, and Dunton took a shine to his pretty sister-in-law. Dunton took Ada hunting and fishing in the Sangre de Cristos and she modeled for at least two paintings, one a nocturne on horseback. Ada Hartley may have posed for Delivering the Mail.

Dunton insisted upon appropriate clothing and accoutrements in his paintings, although he never descended into accuracy for its own sake. Consequently, he assembled an impressive collection of Old West artifacts, much of which he donated to Fort Western in his hometown of Augusta, Maine. Dunton's first trip to the West in 1896 took him to Livingston, Montana, where he worked for a season as a meat hunter for ranches. After that he cowboyed and sketched across the American West from Oregon to Old Mexico. The female rider in Delivering the Mail wears a hat with a Montana peak, a wool mackinaw scarf (preferred by northern plains cowboys), a wool sack coat, fringed-leather gauntlet gloves, a split riding skirt, high heeled cowboy boots, and large-roweled buckaroo spurs.

Finally, Dunton's block letter signature indicates a late 'teens date for Delivering the Mail...I believe Delivering the Mail to be one Dunton's finest paintings of life in the American West and especially of women who carved out their own places in the West. It is a museum-quality Dunton painting and would be an excellent addition to any major Western art collection."