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THBOscar Howe (1915 – 1983) – Man, Horse, Buffalo
About Seller
11944 North Tracey Road
Hayden, ID 83835
United States
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction specializes in the finest classical Western and American Art representing past masters and outstanding contemporary artists. The auction principals have over 100 years of combined experience in selling fine art and have netted their clients over $325 million in the last fif...Read more
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About Auction
LiveJul 26, 2025
The 2025 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, to be held July 26 in Reno, Nevada, will feature 354 selections of unparalleled quality in Western & American Art from historical and contemporary artists such as Charles M. Russell, Maynard Dixon, William R. Leigh, Thomas Moran, Howard Terpning, E. Martin Hennings, and more. Coeur d'Alene Art Auction info@cdaartauction.com
View Full Catalog (354)
- Lot Description
Oscar Howe (1915 – 1983)
Man, Horse, Buffalo
casein on paper
23 × 19 inches
signed lower right
Art critic James D. Balestrieri writes, “Pale pointillist patterns – some loose, some tight – cover the entire surface of Oscar Howe’s Man, Horse, Buffalo. Bubbles within bubbles, the varying concentrations effervesce, suggesting that we are looking in on a mythical space, space outside of space and time, a space and a moment conjured by a force or forces beyond our understanding. One might see the conjuror as a spirit. One might see the conjuror as science and the bubbles as bubbles of space foam, anticipating the notion of the multiverse. One might see Howe himself as the conjuror. One might see all three.
“One most certainly sees a trio in the painting, a trio that might better be termed a triad – a three-in-one composition of man, horse, buffalo – a Lakota Holy Trinity, perhaps. There may be a story somewhere that explains the painting, but only in a 1999 children’s book – S. D. Nelson’s Gift Horse: A Lakota Story – did I find a brief image of a buffalo lifting both horse and rider. Perhaps Man, Horse, Buffalo is Howe’s take on the many Plains stories of hunters who got too close to their fiery quarry, and were compelled to leap from horse to buffalo to avoid being trampled. Stacking man atop horse atop buffalo may well be Howe’s own addition to the stories, his literal ‘I can top that,’ which would not be surprising among storytellers of all kinds, even those who tell stories with brush and paint. Furthermore, Howe takes the tale to the next level, setting it not in the middle of a hunt on the earthly Plains – or plane – but in the cosmos, behind swirls of scrims and bubbles. The impossibility of the moment, as Howe conceives it, detaches it from the historical reality of the hunt and sends the arrow of time on a more mythological course.”
PROVENANCE
Frank and Jan Gibbs Collection, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, ca. 1980s
Reynolds Family Collection, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
View More InformationCondition
As viewed through glass. Painting appears to be in excellent condition.
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