 Phineas Gray Bartlett is primarily known as Gray Phineas Bartlett
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  The following was submitted on 9/25/2001 to the AskART Bulletin area by Crystal Dewey, who wrote: "I
collect anything that is old Native American. I was at an auction and
was looking through the pictures that had Indian's in it. I knew they
were old, so I bought them. They are in color and signed and in the
original frames, sizes 14" x 11 1/2" .
On the back of one of the paper frames is taped:
GRAY BARTLETT - PAINTER IN OILS
He
probably didn't know it at the time but because he had an artist's
soul, Gray Bartlett at the age of 16 left restricted little Minnesota
town where he was born and became a cowboy. That soul resented
confinement, demanded space and independence, freedom of movement and
thought, beauty, grandeur and clean atmosphere, where it could breathe
and thrive.
So at sixteen Gray Bartlett spirit still required
one more thing. He loved the open air, the hills, and the sky, the
colors and the shadows in the mountains, the glow of the sunsets, even
the rainstorms, and the long, dusty trails that would have seemed
desolate to so many lesser minds. In those surroundings, Gray Bartlett
was happy but not yet quite contented. His eyes saw beauty and his soul
felt the grandeur of all those things. But somehow they were shut in
within himself. By some means they must be expressed.
And so, at
length there found its way into Bartlett's saddlebag a sketchbook and
gradually the urge of visual expression eclipsed all else.
Bartlett
left the range country, migrated to Chicago, found a job that would
provide subsistence, went to the Chicago Art Institute and enrolled, on
the advice and under the guidance of a young registrar named Ralph
Holmes. But the road of destiny is often tortuous and the ways of fate
are strange.
Gray Bartlett was not to become a painter for three
more decades. Perhaps he was not yet ready. Maybe thirty years of toil
and experience were needed to give him the perspective and provide the
understanding that were necessary for the final role in life he was
destined to play.
At any rate, soon after his enrollment in the
Art Institute, the illness and death of his mother in Colorado took him
back to help his father care for the family and supply their wants. He
became a commercial artist, working for various photo engraving
companies, one job following another in fairly rapid succession in
Denver, Davenport, Minneapolis and other cities in the Midwest and
west. Finally he married, settled down and began to rear a family of
his own. At length, with $1,800 of borrowed capital, he purchased a
partnership in an engraving firm. Thereafter, as a business man Gray,
artist, can be rated as an outstanding success, disproving the
fallacious theory that artistic temperament and commercial acumen do
not mix.
But always though that one-third of century of
hard-fisted commercialism, competition and economic depression, during
which Bartlett was known as successful business man, there lay in his
heart a suppressed urge for creation and expression that might not have
been contained except that deep in his being he must have known all
along that someday he would paint.
In 1937, Gray Bartlett
retired from his business, moved to California, and resumes the study
of art at the point where he had been forced to leave off thirty years
before. In Los Angeles he enrolled in the Otis Art institute. There he
found that his new instructor would be his first adviser, the same
Ralph Holmes he had known in Chicago so long, long ago.
The
frayed old sketch book of the saddlebag days came out of the mothballs.
There before him again were the same mountains ranges, the same trails,
the same water holes, the dusty looking sagebrush, the tough little cow
ponies, the dramatic incidents in the lives of the cow country folk.
There was the pattern of the color and beauty and grandeur the youthful
Bartlett found on the range. It all came swiftly back to him now. Gray
Bartlett began to paint.
Thirty years of commercialism had not
dimmed the artist's eyes nor unsteadied the artist's hand. With swift,
concise stokes, this typical, two-fisted business man applies oils to
canvas with the realism, sincerity and earnestness bred of long years
of experience in the commercial world. But the result is art - a true
application of what he sees, feels, and has seen in the west, in tones
which no tenderfoot, however skilled an academician he might be, could
ever achieve.
Thirty years is a long time to dream - but is isn't so bad if the dream comes true.
Among Gray Bartlett's finest Western canvases is:
Indian
Police shows the night meeting of three Indians on the open range. Two
of them are Indians police who are questioning a drifter upon whom they
have unexpectedly come while on the lookout for horse thieves who have
been active on the reservation. Losing horses is a serious business as
they represent a great portion of wealth of the Indian. Sheep and
cattle also go in this category. An Indian's wealth is not reckoned in
money, but rather in the number of head of his livestock. Some of the
sheep and cattle may be so aged as to be worthless, but nevertheless to
the Indian they represent wealth. The Indian like the stamp collector,
likes to accumulate all of the livestock he can possibly acquire,
trading off only the few he must relinquish to obtain funds with which
to purchase his necessary supplies. The
plate of this reprint has been destroyed and the entire supply of the
reprints has been acquired by MR. C. E. Ness, President of the Arizona
Title Guarantee & Trust Company.
The other picture says the
same history, but the name is Indian Camp and is a life-like
representation of a common sight at twilight to travelers along the
roads and trails of Arizona. Indians who are on the move generally
carry cooking utensils and an ample supply of sheepskins on which to
sleep. In this manner they are able to make themselves much more
comfortable than most of the white tourist campers you see. The little
horses they use are tough and sturdy, weigh about nine hundred pounds,
and can finish the day's work with "ears up" and willing to plod
further along. They can subsist satisfactorily on the native forage
upon which the ordinary horse would starve to death.
The plate of this reprint has been destroyed and the entire supply of the reprints has been acquired by
MR. C. E. Ness
President of the Arizona Title Guarantee & Trust Company, In the interest in Art
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  In his later years, an extensive traveler and prolific painter of
western nostalgia throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and
Utah, Gray Bartlett began as a fine artist at the age of fifty-two,
having been in the engraving business.
Phineas Gray Bartlett
was born in Rochester, Minnesota, and as a youngster sketched cowboys.
About 1890, he moved to Colorado where he became a working cowboy and
sketched scenes of western life. Deciding he wanted to be an artist
and not a rancher, he studied at the Greeley, Colorado Art School and
then on a scholarship at the Chicago Art Institute.
However,
the death of his mother brought him back to Denver where, to support
his family, he got into photo-engraving. The business prospered, and
he retired in 1937 and went to Los Angeles from where, using many
sketches from earlier years, he pursued his true love--fine art
painting, something he hadn't done for thirty years.
With
camera and sketchbook, he traveled extensively within California and
surrounding states--Colorado, Utah, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. His
paintings are in many collections including that of the Santa Fe
Railway, Arizona State University and the California State Library.
He died from a heart attack in his studio in Los Angeles.
Source:
Peggy and Harold Samuels, Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940 |
Biography from Thomas Nygard Gallery:
| Gray
Bartlett was fifty-two years old in 1937 and still in the engraving
business. He had not worked with a sketch pad and canvas for three
decades. But in the next fourteen years, until his death, he achieved a
lifelong goal and became a foremost western artist.
He grew up
with a love for art and a love for the West. Born in Rochester,
Minnesota, he moved with his parents to Colorado when he was a youth.
By the time he was sixteen, he was working as a cow hand on the open
range, sketching western scenes in a battered sketchbook he carried in
his saddlebags. These sketches were later transferred to canvas.
At
first his ambition was to be a rancher, for the wide-open life in the
west seemed to suit him well. Then he began to realize how strongly he
felt about his sketches and paintings of the West, and he soon became
aware that his true ambition was not ranching, but to be an artist. He
left the cattle country to study at the Greeley Art School in Greeley,
Colorado, and on a scholarship at the Chicago Art Institute.
The
death of his mother forced a decided change in the course of his life.
He gave up his art training and went to work as a commercial artist,
employed by various photo-engraving companies, to help support the
family. He had many such jobs in Denver and other western and
Midwestern cities.
After marrying, he borrowed $1,800.00 and
bought an interest in an engraving firm. The business prospered and, in
1937, Bartlett retired and moved to California where he returned to his
first love - art.
His desire to paint came back stronger than
ever. Despite being neglected for so many years, his skill with a brush
and his eye for color did not fail him, and his early sketches
refreshed his memory. With his camera and notebook he traveled
extensively in Colorado, Utah, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, capturing
the West he remembered so well as a boy. At times he lived among the
Indians, while maintaining studios in Los Angeles and in Moab, Utah.
His
paintings of the Southwest are in many western collections, including
the Santa Fe Railway Collection, Arizona State University, and the
California State Library. Bartlett died of a heart attack suffered
while in his studio in Los Angeles.
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| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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Phineas Bartlett is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
The California Art Club
Taos Pre 1940
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