Dale Nichols

(American, 1905-1995)

The Last Snow

, 1981

oil on canvas

signed Dale Nichols and dated (lower left); titled and inscribed (verso)

24 x 30 inches.

Property from an Important Colorado Collection

Dale Nichols' homeland of Nebraska was a constant inspiration in his art, and he became internationally known for his scenes of vibrant red barns and winter white snow. In 1934, a few years after Grant Wood’s American Gothic took first place at a Chicago Institute of Art competition, Nichols took the same prize with his iconic painting End of the Hunt (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). With that prize, the artist earned his position as a regionalist painter, along with Thomas Hart, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood.

Although the Midwestern landscape would remain his lodestone, Nichols began a peripatetic life when in 1924 he moved to Chicago. After 15 years in that city, he moved to Arizona, where he established an artists’ school. Beginning in the 1950s, the artist roamed between Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Michigan. A long sojourn of 16 years, starting in 1960, saw Nichols settled in Guatemala. An earthquake destabilized Nichols and he again began his wanderings, moving between California, Alaska, and Nevada.

Although he often captured the new landscapes around him, the artist continued to paint scenes of red barns in snow. Executed in 1981 while living in Nevada, the clarity of light and incisive lines of The Last Snow reveal Nichols’ dedication to the Nebraskan terrain. It is a recreated memory of farm life. As he once stated, “In painting these canvases I felt again the vastness of endless skies; experience again the penetrating cold of Nebraskan winters; lived again as farmers live.” (Dale Nichols, Exhibition of the Paintings of Dale Nichols, Macbeth Gallery, New York, 1938) Written on the verso, in the artist’s distinctive calligraphy learned from his early days in advertising, is a quote from Percy Bysshe Shelly: “’Be through my lips../O Wind, if Winter comes,/Can Spring be far behind?’”

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The Last Snow

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