VAM galleries including this work:
The Owensboro Museum of Fine Art | Animal Farm || VAM Home

Themes of the American West, cast in bronze through the lost-wax process, are the primary focus of the work of American artist Harry Jackson. He left Two Champs unpainted, but Jackson sometimes does apply paint to his bronzes.

About the Artist

Born Harry Shapiro in Chicago in 1924, young Harry Jackson first studied art in children’s Saturday classes at the Art Institute of Chicago and encountered cowboys at the Chicago Stockyards. At the age of 14, he hopped a train to Wyoming and became a cowboy. Encouraged by a local artist to continue his artistic development, he was soon proficient enough to serve as the youngest official combat artist for the Marines in World War II.

Jackson later studied art in New York, Mexico, and Europe, and his early influences included abstract painters such as Jackson Pollack and Willem DeKooning. As he continued to study the work of European masters such as Titian and American Western artists like Frederic Remington, he began producing more realistic works.

After initially using sculptures as models for large paintings, Jackson soon developed an affinity for the three-dimensional format. He produced his first bronzes in 1958 in Pietrasanta, Italy. In addition to his own characters of the American West, Jackson has created several portraits of actor John Wayne in his various cowboy film roles, including a 21-foot-tall bronze statue of Wayne that was installed in front of a Beverly Hills bank in 1984.

Jackson is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Vatican Museum in Rome; and Queen Elizabeth of England.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion:

• Vocabulary relating to this piece includes three-dimensional, focus, and line. How does Jackson use diagonal lines to give this piece a sense of movement?
  
  
• Compare the life of Jean-Claude Novaro (creator of the work Bluegrass Band) as a 14-year-old apprentice working in a glass studio with 14-year-old Jackson’s love of the American West, which caused him to leave his Chicago home to move to Wyoming.
  
  
• Compare this work and the bronze of the dancer by Degas. Both show movement; how are they alike and different?
  
  
• Using the web links below, compare Jackson’s unpainted bronzes to his painted pieces. How does adding color affect your perception of the work?
  
  
• Find other works of art relating to the American West. Why do you think this subject matter interests so many artists?

Links

The Southwest Country online store site includes an interesting biography of Harry Jackson.
[swcountry.com/boharry.htm]

A speech made by Jackson on his 75th birthday, on the Buffalo Bill Historical Center web site, highlights the artist’s notions about life, history, and art.
[www.bbhc.org/pointsWest/PWArticle.cfm?ArticleID=10]

View images of other works by Jackson, including painted bronze pieces, at the Legacy Gallery.
[www.legacygallery.com]

Read a description of the lost-wax casting process at ClassicBronze.com.
[www.classicbronze.com/process.html]

See works by Frederic Remington at the Frederic Remington Art Museum site.
[www.fredericremington.org]