Description:

SHELBY "PIKE" BARNES UP IN MARCUS DALY'S SILKS Marcus Daly was known as the "Copper King" as his wealth was derived from his Anaconda Copper Mine in Butte, Montana. He used his enormous wealth to build state-of-the-art training facilities and to acquire top bloodstock. In the 1880s Daly built a covered track with 400,000 board feet of lumber. It had its own heating plant and cost $10,000. The track was layered with eight inches of foam, topped by tanbark and surfaced with sod. The track was enclosed in 1892. Ada Powell, The Dalys of the Bitter Root, Bitterroot River Valley, Montana: 1989, p. 110 In 1889 Daly spent $160,000 on horses, mostly Thoroughbreds, including such colts as St. Blaze, Sierra Madre, Warwick, Norfolk, and Ononodago. Daly had a plan to obtain the greatest horses from all over the world and to breed these horses until all the flaws were eliminated. Henry Herman Cross was a famous American 19th century painter of Native American portraits and racehorses. He was described by Buffalo Bill Cody, a close personal friend, as the "greatest painter of Indian portraiture of all times." As a very young man, Henry ran away from home twice to join the circus, but in both instances he was made to return home. At 16 he boarded a freighter and traveled to Paris where he befriended the famous French animal painter Rosa Bonheur with whom he would study for three years. He was described by one biographer as: "A chubby little fellow who wore heavy rimless glasses, had a walrus mustache, and a preference for wearing double-breasted coats with velvet collars." H. H. Cross became well known for the scenes he painted on circus wagons for the Barnum & Bailey Circus. After a stint as a purely commercial painter, Cross traveled to the West where he became fluent in the Sioux language. His grasp of the language allowed him access to paint portraits of many of the famous Sioux warriors as well as the great chiefs of the late 19th century. Cross painted hundreds of portraits of Native Americans including that of the famous Sioux chief Sitting Bull. Daly commissioned Cross to paint his horses on his Bitterroot Stock Farm near Hamilton, Montana. In the summers of 1891 and 1892, Cross painted a number of Daly's best horses, and he used the beautiful scenery of Daly's expansive stock farm for the backdrop. Two of the paintings were 7 feet by 10 feet and weighed roughly 300 pounds each. The pictures Cross painted for Daly in 1891 and 1892 are reputed to have cost Daly between $20,000 and $30,000. Daly's estate passed to his granddaughter, Baroness Margit Sigray Bessenyey, and then descended through the family until 1987 at which point they were sold at auction.

  • Dimensions: 28"x 36"
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Notes: Signed and dated 1892

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November 19, 2014 4:00 PM EST
Lexington, KY, US

Cross Gate Gallery

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