Dale Nichols

(American, 1905-1995)

Red Barn and Snow

, 1985

oil on canvas

signed Dale Nichols, dated, and inscribed (verso)

32 x 40 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. Nichols first traveled to Wasilla, Alaska in 1937 and continued to visit that harsh wilderness on and off for years to come. Painted in Wasilla, Red Barn and Snow, 1985, portrays the farming landscape of Nichols’ younger years, from the vast sky and bright barn to the undulating snow on the fields and horse-drawn carriage. A calligraphic inscription on the canvas verso acknowledges the artist’s own debt to his first renowned painting, End of the Hunt: “’The play is the thing’/said Shakespeare/Therefore with slight/change in detail (such/as a steel windmill replacing/wood) this genre scene/is the same as the first./Thus it is an encore.” With Red Barn and Snow, Nichols comes full circle, an artist who continuously searched in his paintings to convey a sense of place and awareness of man’s relationship to nature.