Harry Jackson

Harry Andrew Jackson (April 18, 1924 – April 25, 2011), born Harry Aaron Shapiro Jr., was an American artist. He began his career as a Marine combat artist, then later worked in the abstract expressionist, realist, and American western styles.

Early life and military career The Union Stock Yards, where Jackson worked in his mother's lunchroom. During his time in the meatpacking district, Jackson was fascinated by the cowboys he met there and developed an interest in the American frontier and Western genre.

Harry Aaron Shapiro Jr. was born to Harry Shapiro and Ellen Jackson in Chicago on April 18, 1924. His name was changed to Harry Andrew Jackson after his parents divorced. As a child, Jackson sometimes skipped classes and wandered the streets of Chicago. Jackson ran away from home in 1938, at fourteen years old. He hitchhiked to Wyoming, where he worked as a ranch hand in Cody. In 1938 he worked for Earl Martin at the Bradford Ranch on the North Fork, He eventually became a cowboy. Jackson also began sketching, according to The New York Times, in the ways of Frederic Remington. In September 1944, Jackson returned to the United States and became the youngest ever Marine Corps combat artist at age twenty. He was stationed in Los Angeles and, in this role, drew and painted "[his] bloodiest close-combat experiences". By the early 1980s, he was one of the highest-paid American artists. He said the New York school was "too removed from man" and "did not speak to the people I was born and raised with. ... John Wayne spoke for these people ... he was a wonderful embodiment of the timeless strength of the rugged individualist, the one-man majority I believe in with my entire being."

Works

Among Jackson's combat artworks were Betio Beachhead (1944), Marine in Battle (1944), and Charging Under Fire (1945). One of his first realist works was the large-scale painting The Italian Bar (1956), which depicts a tavern and its patrons on Little Italy's Mulberry Street. Jackson dedicated The Range Burial to Pollock. Both works were loaned to the Atlanta Art Conservation Center in 2009 for conservation; The paintings were also executed as bronzes and lithographs. The , bronze sculpture was dedicated in 1984.

Between April 2005 and May 2006, Jackson completed the first six of his "Quartet" paintings, which he said "indicate the blissfully liberating spirit of Kandinsky and Pollock".

Personal and later life Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in 1963. Jackson performed with both at Carnegie Hall and, in the mid-1960s, created a portrait of Dylan during a transitional time in the singer's career.

Jackson did some acting on Hollywood radio and recorded songs he learned at Pitchfork Ranch for Folkways Records during the 1950s. His album The Cowboy: His Songs, Ballads and Brag Talk was released in 1959. He recorded for Columbia Records in New York during the 1960s, His repertory included songs like "The Pot Wrassler" and "Streets of Laredo", and were "all sung in an authentic, unadorned style far removed from popular music or the folk-pop of the period". One of his marriages was to abstract expressionist painter Grace Hartigan, which lasted for a year. Reno's Coeur d'Alene Art Auction sold a series of his artworks on July 23, 2011. In 2015, Harry Jackson Studios exhibited Betio: Light and War, which consists of 56 paintings, for the first time and in conjunction with the Buffalo Bill Center of the West "Rendezvous Royale" fundraiser. Artist and critic Gordon McConnell, who was a curator for the Yellowstone Art Museum, described the exhibit as a "monumental masterpiece" that "deserves a place among the important paintings of our time." Also showcased were sculptures formerly stored at Jackson's foundry in Italy, along with dozens of other drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and Smithsonian American Art Museum. Other Wyoming institutions with works by Jackson include the Meeteetse Museum,

In Jackson's obituary, The New York Times described him as an "artist who captured the West".

Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan each appreciated and displayed Jackson's works, and selected his sculptures as gifts to heads of state. which depicts Clayton Danks hanging onto Steamboat, the stallion from Bucking Horse and Rider seen on Wyoming's vehicle registration plates, to celebrate the United States Bicentennial. Folkways Recordings

Drawings Tarawa-Betio (1940s), part of the collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps The Big Picture: A Look at the Life and Art of Harry Jackson (2014), McMurry Gallery, Nicolaysen Art Museum

Paintings

Cowboy Harry, Self Portrait at 12 (1936) Bronc Stomper (1959), bronze The Stampede, or simply Stampede (1959), based on his 1965 painting of the same name Cowboy's Meditation, Where the Trail Forks (1964), bronze, part of the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Gunsil, or The Gunsil (1964 or 1966), patinated bronze Iroquois Guide (1967), polychrome bronze Trapper Study (1968), bronze Algonquin Chief Bust (1971), patinated bronze Algonquin Chief and Warrior (1971) Two Champs (1974) and Two Champs, Five Foot, patinated bronze Chief Washakie – First Working Model (1978), bronze Sacagawea, Study for a Monument (1979), bronze with brown patina Sacajawea, First Working Model for a Monument (1979), bronze part of the Art in Embassies Program In the Wind, Iroquois Guide II (1980), polychrome bronze Foreman (1981), painted bronze Ropin' a Star (1982), bronze or The Flagbearer, polychrome bronze, or Flagbearer (1983) Safe and Sound Blizzard (1983), painted bronze Washakie II Sunset (1986), painted bronze Dog Soldier II (1991), painted bronze The Victor (1991), polychrome bronze The Flag Bearer II (1992) Cosmos (1996–1997), bronze, egg tempera Sacajawea Modified II (2005)