As executive director at the Dallas Historical Society, Michael Duty was responsible for 3 million objects in the organization’s collection, and a key player in the successful campaign to renovate the Texas Hall of State, a national landmark building.

Before working at the historical society, Duty was a top administrator at the National Western Art Foundation in San Antonio, Texas; the Rockwell Museum in Corning, N.Y.; the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art in Indianapolis, Ind.; and the California Historical Society in San Francisco.

He is author of several books on Western art, including “Dave McGary, American Realism in Bronze”; “Under Western Skies: The Art of Bob Pummill”; and the upcoming “Texas Traditions: Contemporary Artists of the Lone Star State.” His book “Cowboy Artists of America” won the Wrangler Award for best art book of 2003, presented by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

In 2008, Duty joined Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries as director of the auction house’s Art of the American West department.

Q: How did you get interested in Art of the American West?
A: I had a great professor in college who was teaching American Studies and he came in one day with a slide show of Frederic Remington [1861-1909] and C.M. Russell [1864-1926]. I grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, and I knew people who worked on ranches or they knew people who did and, boy, those paintings sure didn’t look like the West that I knew. The West of those early artists was pretty romanticized and the cowboys I knew were hard workers, but they didn’t wear fancy kerchiefs and tucked their pants into their boots. So I got very interested in the difference between how the West is represented and how it really was.

Q. What sets Western Art apart from Texas art or Cowboy art or Southwestern art?
A: There’s a lot of overlap. I take a pretty broad definition of Western Art. I would say, for me, it’s art that’s either about this geographic region, basically west of the Mississippi, or it’s about the idea of the West, which is about adventure and drama.

Q: Are there common themes in Western Art?
A: I would say there are three primary themes, which people have been doing since the 1830s: Native Americans, “The Land,” and what I would call “The Grand Drama of the West,” which would be the cattle drives, the stagecoaches, the cavalry charges. Most Western artists will fall into these categories, and a lot of times they’ll do all three.

Q: We’re not only talking about paintings, correct?
A: Sculptures, photos. Photography probably is a separate subset. There are a lot of photographers out there doing landscapes and people. Sculptors certainly are a big part of Western art. A lot of them will do both. They will paint and sculpt.

Q. You’ve written about Frederic Remington, Dave McGary, Bob Pummill. Are these the “big names” in Western Art?
A: Bob and Dave are living artists, quite successful. But you have to start with Remington and Russell. They painted the same subjects, but they had very different approaches. Also important is almost everybody who was part of the Taos Society of Artists. Maynard Dixon [1875-1946] is another one. Back in the ’40s and ’50s, you could go to Taos and buy paintings by these people for hundreds of dollars. Victor Higgins [1884-1949] used to go out in the dessert in his car and paint and bring them back to the square in Taos and sell them for a hundred bucks. Today, a Higgins painting might bring $300,000.

Q: Your new book is “Texas Traditions: Contemporary Artists of the Lone Star State.” Why did you tackle this subject?
A: I was approached by a publisher with whom I had worked before and asked if I was interested in doing a book on Texas artists. I have long been interested in the connection between Texas history and Western history. I also wanted to explore why so many contemporary Western artists have chosen to live and work in Texas. Some of these artists are homegrown and some have only recently moved to the state, but I think all are firmly rooted in the artistic traditions of Texas.

Q: What are some of the significant Western Art sales of the past year?
A: We’ve seen a lot of early work by the original members of the Cowboy Artists of America. That’s a group that started in the 1960s. They’ve been popular, but it’s been hard to find early works by these guys. Joe Beeler [1931-2006], John Hampton [1918-1999], Melvin Warren [1920-1995], James Boren [1921-1990]. Arguably, the most successful Texas Western artist is a guy named Gerald Harvey Jones [b.1933], who goes by G. Harvey. He is immensely popular.

Q. Where do you see Western Art heading in the next 10 years?
A: We’ll probably see a lot more of what I’d call “Modernist West” coming to the market. It’s interesting. As long as I’ve been involved in Western art and history, someone Cialis Professional has been saying, “Well, pretty soon, in two or three years, no one will care about the West. They’re not making Western movies.” And, you know, two or three years later, something else gets popular, whether it’s the Rocky Mountain West or the Southwest. It’s a subject that I think people will be painting 100 years from now.

Author Bio: Hector Cantu is editorial director at Heritage Magazine (www.HeritageMagazine.com), where this story originally appeared. For a free subscription, visit www.HeritageMagazine.com.

Category: Hobbies/Collecting
Keywords: Frederic Remington, C.M. Russell, Taos Society of Artists, Maynard Dixon, Dave McGary, Bob Pummill, Victor Higgins