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Gov' of War signed '-H.H. Betts-' (lower left) oil on canvas 26 x 30in framed 32 x 36in.
Footnotes
Provenance Private collection, Chicago.
American painter and illustrator Harold Harrington Betts was born into an artistic family, and he studied under his father, Edwin Daniel Betts Sr. (1847-1915). Although he was born in New York, the artist spent most of his life in Chicago where he frequently exhibited at the Art Institute. Betts also exhibited at the Hackley Gallery in Muskegon, Michigan and at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Betts is known best for his Southwestern paintings of the Pueblo Indians as well as the Grand Canyon. He began making trips West in about 1906, likely while working for the Santa Fe Railway, and again in 1913 and 1929. Many of the artist's works remain in the Santa Fe Railway Collection (now BNSF Railway Company, Fort Worth, Texas). Gov' of War is a powerful portrait painted in intensely fauvist colors on a bright sunlit day. A Navajo Chief Gov' of War sits in profile facing the sun, and wears a full headdress and wrapped braids with a chief's blanket over his arm. Betts places the figure in the immediate foreground filling the composition from top to bottom. Gov' of War is painted with fidelity to the sitter in bold brushstrokes of bright color that focus the viewer's attention on the sitter, contrasting with the background's abstracted landscape.
Contacts
California and Western Art (US)
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California and Western Art
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