Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) is a 20th century American artist, who focused on the West. Dixon was born in Fresno, California. His family had been aristocratic Virginia Confederates who fled to California after the civil war. His grandfather was a Navy officer from San Francisco. His mother’s passion was reading the classics. She encouraged Dixon to write and develop his art. He became a student of tonalist painter Arthur Mathews at the California School of Design. It was at this time that he became a member of the famous Bohemian Club.

In 1900 Dixon visited Arizona and New Mexico as he roamed the wild west. The next year he and artist Edward Borein went on a horseback trip through several Western states. He also lived in New York with his wife and daughter Constance. But he was drawn back to the west, and his marriage ended.

Influenced in part by the Panama Pacific International Exposition on 1915, Dixon moved away from impressionism and into a simpler, more modern style. He met his second wife Dorothea Lange, a portrait photographer from the East. Maynard’s style changed dramatically around 1925 to more powerful modernist compositions. The power of low horizons and marching cloud formations, simplified and distilled, became his trademark

During the Great Depression, Dixon painted a series of social realism canvasses depicting the prevailing politics of maritime strikes, displaced workers, and those affected so deeply by the depression.

Dixon and Lange divorced in 1935. Two years later he married San Francisco muralist Edith Hamlin. The couple moved to Southern Utah, the source of some of Dixon’s greatest art. He had returned to inspiration of the land. In 1939, he built a summer home in Mount Carmel. Dixon spent winter months in Tucson, where the couple also had a home and studio.

This Western Sunset Landscape measuring 16″ x 12″ (size without frame) oil on canvas sold for $2200 in June 2009.