Lot 40
Armin Hansen(American, 1886-1957)Cowboy sport 16 x 20in
28 April 2015, 18:00 PDT
Los Angeles and San FranciscoSold for US$75,000 inc. premium
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Armin Hansen (American, 1886-1957)
Cowboy sport
signed 'Armin Hansen NA' (lower right) and signed and titled twice (on the reverse)
oil on canvas board
16 x 20in
overall: 23 x 27in
signed 'Armin Hansen NA' (lower right) and signed and titled twice (on the reverse)
oil on canvas board
16 x 20in
overall: 23 x 27in
Footnotes
Provenance
Private collection, San Francisco, California.
Collection of Anthony Hunter, Berkeley, 1954.
Private collection, Southern California.
Armin Hansen made a good living as a painter in the 1920s. Demand for his work was strong and his career seemed solid. But the stock market crash of 1929 hit Hansen as much as every other American, both in decimating his savings as well as eliminating his patrons. In late November of that year, he wrote to his Los Angeles dealer Earl Stendahl, "When last I wrote you . . . I was just about broke -- now I am."
In an effort to survive the difficult 1930s, Hansen exhibited as much as he could, took on as many commissions as he was offered, both with portrait as well as mural projects, and painted "everything, anything" to make ends meet. Los Angeles reviewer Arthur Millier noted the broadened array of his work, writing that "Hansen comes ashore, too, and paints or etches a rodeo or the hills back from Monterey. And he has gentle moments when he paints delicate still lifes of glass and tableware."
Hansen had painted rodeo subjects before. He produced his first rodeo compositions in 1913, after a friend took him to a rodeo in Salinas, just East of Monterey. In 1930, he reintroduced the subject in a Los Angeles exhibition, which stood out among his marines and led a reviewer to declare that Hansen had "gone western."
In Cowboy Sport, Hansen exemplifies the same signature characteristics found in his marine scenes, those of masculinity, power and movement. The bronco rider is captured at a moment when the audience is not sure whether he will be thrown from the horse or hang on for a few seconds more. All of the cowboys are fixed on the scene in anticipation of the outcome. They circle the composition in a balanced manner, juxtaposed to the unbalanced horse and rider. We only see a suggestion of the cowboys along the edges of the composition, as they merely frame the central focal point. Hansen's palette captures the dusty soil of the rodeo pen and contrasts marvelously with the slivers of color in each of the cowboys' shirts, chaps and kerchiefs.