Robert Whitmore Oil Painting of Cowboy in Landscape

Item Details

Robert Whitmore (Ohio; 1890 – 1979)
Untitled, circa 1928
Oil painting on canvas
Unsigned
Handwritten inscription to verso by Jon Whitmore (artist’s son) indicating artist and date

An oil painting on canvas by listed Ohio artist Robert Whitmore (1890 – 1979), created circa 1928. This painting depicts a cowboy on horseback, facing a lone cow wandering through a vast, mountainous landscape. It is rendered with a sophisticated sense of color that serves to create movement through the composition. This work is unsigned. A handwritten inscription to the verso, from the artist’s son, indicates the artist and date. It is presented in a simple wooden frame.

Provenance
Collection of Jon Whitmore (artist’s son)

Robert H. Whitmore was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1890, leaving to attend the Art Institute of Chicago from 1913 to 1917, and after serving for a year in World War, returning to Ohio to continue his artistic studies at the Cincinnati Art Academy. His teaching career began at the Dayton Art Institute in the 1920s and culminated in a thirty year tenure at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was here that he purchased twenty-nine acres of land where he lived and continued to paint until his death in 1979.

Whitmore came from a strong academic background with an emphasis on draughtsmanship, but the influence of Impressionism and the rise of Modernism can be seen in his layered, vibrant color and loose brushwork. He preferred to paint in plein air, believing that an honest interpretation of nature could only come through direct contact, and even transformed a Model T truck into an mobile studio.
Whitmore’s work has been widely exhibited across Ohio, including a 2009 retrospective at the Dayton Art Institute.

Dimensions

- measures frame. Visible image measures 38.5" W x 28.5" H.

Item #

18CIN517-023