W. Herbert Dunton

born Augusta, Maine, 1878; died Taos, New Mexico, 1936

BiographyWilliam Herbert “Buck” Dunton was an avid outdoorsman who grew up in Maine hunting and fishing. At the age of 18 he headed west to Montana to work as a cowboy and assistant to a bear hunter. To pursue a career as an illustrator he moved to Boston in 1897 and attended Cowles Art School, then to New York in 1903 to study at the Art Students League. He published his first illustration at the age of 21 and went on to have work appear in numerous popular magazines including Harper’s Weekly, Scribner’s, and the Saturday Evening Post as well as in a number of western novels. Dunton met Ernest Blumenschein at the Salmagundi Club in New York in 1911 and Blumenschein invited him to visit Taos, New Mexico, the following year. Dunton became the youngest founding member of the Taos Society of Artists. In Taos he gave up illustration work and focused on painting, forging a successful national career. His most prominent patrons were Nelda and H.J. Lutcher Stark, who bought hundreds of his works. Their collection later became the foundation of the Stark Museum in Orange, Texas.

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