Western Art Collector – August 2019

M

any of us grew up on Western

movies. We reveled in their romantic

plots and the wide-open, majestic

landscapes that were completely foreign to

many of us.

Westerns had a different role in forming the

lives of our collectors as well as their interest in

collecting art that relates to it.

Her father worked for the studios that

produced Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger

and other fictional heroes, and her mother

made sure she experienced all the arts from

museums to the theater when she was a girl. “I

had some exposure in college,” she says, “but

I got my education when we started collecting.”

He arrived in the United States from Israel

at the age of 13. “I spoke little English,” he

relates. “I watched Western movies to learn

the language.”

The couple’s first purchase was a

signed screenprint by Senator Ted Kennedy

of his family’s compound in Hyannis Port,

Massachusetts, that they found in an auction

in Palm Springs. “My grandfather had a home

in Nahant on the north shore of Boston,” she

recalls, “and it made me think of that. It had

a connection.” Their first oil painting was a

landscape by Joseph Orr that they purchased

in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“If I can close my eyes when I see a

landscape painting and feel myself in it taking

an imaginary walk through the scene,” he says,

“I like the painting.”

Today, their vast collection of landscapes,

portraits, animals and sculpture literally

populate their home on the beach in Southern

To the left of the column are, top to bottom, G. Harvey’s oil Country Showers and Adam Smith’s oil Powder Run. Directly to the right of the column

are, top to bottom, H. David Wright’s oil Considering the Consequences and Martin Grelle’s oil The Guidon. Next to those are, top to bottom, Denis

Milhomme’s oil Arizona Desert, Logan Maxwell Hagege’s oil Desert Tranquility, Daniel Keys’ oil Peach Roses & White Dahlias and Brittany Weistling’s

oil Midsummer Roses. Above the cabinet are, top to bottom, Jeremy Lipking’s oil Spring Aspens and his oil Amongst the Sage. Next to them is Deux

Mats a Quai Pres de Falaises, 1800s, an oil by Eugène Galien-Laloue (1854–1941). On the cabinet are, left to right, Amphora Co.'s The Jumping Lion

Fish, ceramic, 1900s; Scott Tallman Powers’ oil Determined; and Ken Humpherville’s Eh-Kolie—The Whale, which won Best in Wooden Carving in the

American Indian Arts Marketplace at the Autry Museum of the American West. Above the stairway are, left to right, Morgan Weistling’s oil Seeker, Z.S.

Liang’s oil Aztec Man, Martin Grelle’s oil Early Morn on the 06, Glenn Dean’s oil At the Foot of the Mesa and Jason Rich’s oil study Releasing the Flank

Strap. The large painting in the stairwell is Scott Tallman Powers’ oil Old Soldier in a New World.