Harry Jackson

born Chicago, Illinois, 1924; died Sheridan, Wyoming, 2011

BiographyHarry Jackson spent his childhood in Chicago watching the cattlemen at the stockyards and visiting the Harding Museum to marvel at Frederic Remington’s bronzes. At age 14 he ran away to work as a cowboy in Cody, Wyoming, but made return visits to Chicago to study at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Frederick Mizen Academy. Jackson served in the Marine Corps during World War II in the Pacific Theater. After being wounded in action, he was named an official Marine Corps Combat Artist at age 20, the youngest combat artist to date. In 1944 he saw the abstract work of Jackson Pollock and was inspired to move to New York, where he befriended Pollock and showed promise as an abstract expressionist painter. His career took another turn when he traveled to Europe in the 1950s and decided to return to realism. Shortly after, he received a commission to create two mural-sized western paintings for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center (now the Buffalo Bill Center of the West) in Cody. From then on Jackson focused largely on western American sculpture and painting for the rest of his career, working from his home in Wyoming.

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