"A war party is on the
move through the high Rockies. The rock formations and landscape are
typical of Montana in the area near the Canadian border. A scout has led
the way, ahead of the others. The Blackfoot scout often wore a wolf
headdress . . . not as a uniform, but rather as a designation of his
rank or position. Since the wolf was a hunter and tracker, it was
appropriate for the scout to emulate these characteristics through his
dress"
Frank
McCarthy
1924 - 2002
Frank
McCarthy was born in New York City in 1924. He studied at the Art Students
League in New York City during the summers starting at the age of 14. He was
a graduate of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. Frank McCarthy began
his art career as a commercial illustrator. He painted illustrations for
most of the paperback book publishers, magazines, movie companies, and
advertisements. He created works that became posters for such movies as
the James Bond series. Frank McCarthy's talents were highly sought after
by art directors enabling him to work as a free lance illustrator for many
years. His art career spanned over 50 years, beginning with a request for a
western cover for a magazine by an art director. He left the world of
commercial art in 1968, and began his fine art career after moving to
Sedona, Arizona.
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From The Rim
Frank
McCarthy’s From the Rim is set against a giant shelf of rimrock and
under threatening skies. A Sioux warrior rides out beyond his waiting
and impatient war party. Shading his eyes and scanning the horizon, he
is looking perhaps for a mirror flash or a scout’s signal with blanket
or robe to indicate in which direction the warriors should ride. It was
the habit of the Sioux, when no enemy came to them within a respectable
interval, to ride forth and seek out a worthy adversary. The Sioux often
chose the Pawnee on whom to bestow these periodic blessings, giving
their young men a chance to satisfy their need to display their valor in
battle.
McCarthy’s work was always imbued with a high sense of drama. Each
painting nearly leaps off the canvas. He builds this sense of tension in
every painting, even when the horses and figures are still. From the Rim
is a perfect example of this McCarthy trademark style. Here, the action
is provided in the dramatic and foreboding design of the landscape
surrounding this seemingly motionless Sioux scout.
In the long shadows of
breaking daylight, a Blackfoot Indian raiding party rides with purpose
and bears the markings of war in what is our largest-ever Frank McCarthy
Fine Art Edition. At over 6 feet in length, this remarkable work of art
from the Dean of Western Action will electrify any room in which it
hangs.
The Blackfeet were
enemies of the Crow and Sioux on the Great Plains and of the Shoshone in
the mountains to their west and of the Cree to their north. Not only
were they fierce in defense of their Canadian border homeland but their
raiding parties ranged out along the Old North Trail from Alberta,
Canada south to Mexico. Raiders of various tribes followed it, stealing
horses and food from white settlers and other tribes.
Blackfoot war
parties would ride hundreds of miles on these raids. They were hailed as
heroes by their own tribe and vilified by their victims. The single
greatest blow to Blackfoot power in the West came not from combat but
from disease. In the mid-1800s, more than 6,000 Blackfoot natives died
of smallpox from a single instance of exposure to an infected white
person. This ended the Blackfoot raider dominance of the Great Plains.
A war party is on the
move through the high Rockies. The rock formations and landscape are
typical of Montana in the area near the Canadian border. A scout has led
the way, ahead of the others. The Blackfoot scout often wore a wolf
headdress . . . not as a uniform, but rather as a designation of his
rank or position. Since the wolf was a hunter and tracker, it was
appropriate for the scout to emulate these characteristics through his
dress
A Comanche war
chief turns his raiding party back toward camp after encountering
what his dreams have told him is a bad omen, a violent storm that
sets the night sky on fire. The scout, known by his wolf headdress,
looks wildly over his shoulder as he urges his horse to an even
faster pace Brave warriors who would not flinch before a human enemy
were often awed by thunder and lightning, a force they could not
control.
"Gathering storm
clouds symbolize the approaching conflict as Indians worriedly
observe settler wagons just beyond effective rifle range," wrote
Frank McCarthy. "In the beginning people were mostly just passing
through, but as settlers increasingly dropped off to stay, it was
clear that the Indians' claim to the land was threatened."
A massive thunderstorm gathering in the background adds drama to
this painting and symbolizes the growing storm between settler and
Native American. A group of Sioux watch as an early wagon train
pushes west. The Native Americans were not yet ready to fight, for
they had not yet lost their buffalo herds or vast lands. But as the
influx continued, these events would come to pass and the gathering
storm would break and unleash its fury on the prairie.
“I had a good time doing this painting,”
said Frank McCarthy. “It’s a combination of many forms of Western
action. There’s the galloping of the horses, but also the rushing of
the water and even the movement of the
clouds above.”
The desert lands of the southwestern
United States contain a multitude of mysteries and artifacts of earlier
peoples. The images carved into the rock face in Guardians of the Waters
did, at one time, have specific meaning, but experts today do not agree on
their precise translation. McCarthy’s dynamic portrait of a band of warriors
racing past a group of symbols illustrates the grand scale and intriguing
style of some of these petroglyphs. Perhaps these warriors know their true
meaning.
An army patrol scours the dry and dusty
but spectacular canyon country in search of Indians, who refer to the
cavalrymen as “Long Knives” for the sabers they carry. Though the men on
these exhausting patrols rarely found Indians, they did learn the lay of the
land and their geographic discoveries helped to create some of the first
maps of the Southwest.
In the Land of the Winter Hawk depicts the
headlong flight of two Blackfeet warriors. As the two men race across the
frozen landscape, the only noises breaking the late morning stillness are
the quick breaths of horses and riders and the muffled sounds of hoof beats
on the snow.
'' The Challenge shows the
start of a confrontation between a Sioux warrior riding upstream and an
enemy in the forest up ahead. He waves his coup stick in defiance at the
adversary, who remains unseen by the viewer. The coup stick was
important in Indian warfare. A coup was like scoring a point in a deadly
game of war; if a warrior could touch the enemy with the coup stick it
could be more important than if he killed him.''
“Plains Indian legend holds that the white
buffalo was such a rarity that even the Great Spirit was in awe of it,”
explained acclaimed artist Frank McCarthy. “The beast was valued by all the
tribes, especially the Mandans for whom a good skin could command the price
of ten to fifteen horses.
Displayed in a place of special importance, the hide was considered Big
Medicine. I modeled the white buffalo after a photo I took of the last known
albino. The chances of a white bison appearing in a herd are one in five
million, so I feel lucky to have seen one under any circumstances – almost
as lucky as the two Sioux hunters in Big Medicine must have felt.”
Picture This
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