Maynard Dixon was born on a ranch near Fresno, CA on Jan 24, 1875. Sketching occupied much of Dixon’s time while growing up. As a boy he listened with fascination to the stories of the Old West told by the old timers. It is no wonder that cowboys and Indians were to become the main subject matter of his life’s work. At age 16 he sent his sketch book to Frederic Remington, who encouraged Dixon to pursue an art career.

The Dixon family moved to Alameda, CA in 1893, the year the artist’s first illustration was published in Overland Monthly. Dixon enrolled at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute, but the confines of a classroom were not to his liking and he remained only three months. In 1895 he took his first full time job as an illustrator for the San Francisco Morning Call and continued four years later with the San Francisco Examiner. During this time he was exhibiting regularly with the San Francisco Art Association.

In 1905 Dixon married artist Lillian West Tobey and by 1899 was making regular sketching trips into the Northwest and Southwest. The fire of 1906 tragically destroyed his studio and most of his early works. The Dixons then lived across the Golden Gate in Sausalito until 1907 when he accepted a commission from the Southern Pacific Railroad to paint a mural for their depot in Tucson, AZ. Afterwards he moved to New York where he continued his magazine illustrations.

Upon returning to California in 1912, he abandoned commercial art to concentrate on easel paintings and murals. During the Panama Pacific International Exhibition he divorced his wife in 1917, and remarried in 1920 to prominent San Francisco photographer Dorothea Lange. This marriage lasted until 1935 and in 1937 he married artist Edith Hamlin. During the 1930s he executed murals and paintings for the WPA and in 1938 ill health forced his move to the drier climate of Tucson where he maintained a studio in nearby Mt. Carmel, UT. Today he is internationally famous for his western subjects which he often signed with his logo, an Indian Thunderbird.

Member: Salmagundi Club, NY; Architectural League of New York; San Francisco Art Association; Bohemian Club; Press Club of San Francisco; Bay Region Art Association; Oakland Art Association; Foundation of Western Art, Los Angeles; Painters of the West, Los Angeles; Berkeley Art League; American Federation of Arts; South West Society; American Artist Congress.

Selected solo exhibitions: Vickery, Atkins & Torrey Gallery, San Francisco, 1914; Panama Pacific International Exhibition (bronze medal); Bohemian Club, 1915; Oakland Art Gallery, 1919; Gump’s San Francisco 1920; Stendahl Gallery, Los Angeles, 1921; Mac Beth Gallery, New York, 1923; Galerie Beaux Arts, San Francisco, 1925-32; Mills College, Oakland, 1927; Pasadena Art Museum, 1928; Haggin Museum, Stockton, 1934; de Young Museum, 1956, 1968; California Historical Society, 1975; Fresno Arts Center, 1975; California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, 1981.

Murals: Canoga Park, CA, Post Office; Martinez, CA, Post Office; John C. Fremont High School, Los Angeles; Main reading room of Sacramento State Library; West Coast Theater, Oakland; Mark Hopkins Hotel’s, Hall of the Dons (done with Frank Van Sloun); Oakland Technical High School; Arizona Biltmore Hotel, Phoenix Depart of Interior Bldg., Washington DC.

Works held: Brooklyn Museum; University of Idaho; de Young Museum; Brigham Young University; Mills College; Cook Museum of Honolulu; Pasadena Art Institute; Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley; Southwest Museum.

(Source: Hughes, Edan Milton, "Artists in California: 1786-1940," San Francisco: Hughes Publishing Company, 1989.)