Maynard Dixon (American, 1875-1946) Hopi Ceremonial, The Call San Francisco newspaper interior, March 19, 1899 Ink wash, gouache, and charcoal on paper 14-1/4 x 17-1/8 inches (36.2 x 43.5 cm) (sheet) Signed lower right: Dixon Inscribed indistinctly on the reverse PROVENANCE: Mitchell Brown Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Zaplin Lampert Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Private collection, Studio, City, California. LITERATURE: "The Secrets of the Moqui, Fire Worship," The Call Sunday Edition, San Francisco, California, March 19, 1899, illustrated. D. J. Hagerty, The Life of Maynard Dixon, Layton, Utah, 2010, p. 46, illustrated. We are grateful to Donald J. Hagerty for providing the following essay: Journalism and the illustration arts flourished in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. The city's four major newspapers competed fiercely with each other and all of them--the Call Examiner, Chronicle and the Bulletin tried to employ the best writers and illustrators. For nearly a decade, Dixon would supply countless illustrations for all four publications. By the end of the nineteenth century, Dixon was considered one of the city's leading illustrators, and his work appeared with increasing regularity in the San Francisco Call during 1898 and 1899. He worked at the newspapers 315-foot-high steel frame building at Third and Market streets or in his Pine Street studio, producing illustrations for full-page Sunday feature stories, along with assignments in the "morgue detail" covering court trials, society events, prize fights, and violence among the bars and brothels of the city's Barbary Coast waterfront. Among his assignments were illustrations for stories by Gertrude Atherton, Rudyard Kipling and other notable authors. One of his illustrations for the San Francisco Call in 1899 was Hopi Ceremonial, an illustration of a sacred ritual of the Hopi Indians in Arizona. Dixon had never been to the Hopi country so most likely he based this illustration on descriptions from visitor's recollections or publications. The image shows an increasing sophistication as an artist with its organized composition and as such is an important transitional work. Furthermore, it shows Dixon had now moved toward painting. Previously his work had been in crayon or pen and ink but as newspapers and other periodicals moved toward the new process of color printing, Dixon adapted and grew as an artist. HID12401132022 © 2024 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved