Roping a Wolf (Roping a Lobo)

There is an genuineness in William Herbert Dunton's depictions of the American West that comes from his personal experience as a cowboy, hunter and lifelong avid outdoorsman. Indeed, "unlike his Taos brethren, and his peers outside Taos, Dunton was an outdoorsman in the purest sense of the word. He was also one of the few American artists who was a participant in the West, rather than an observer or spectator of it, having worked periodically as a cowboy and hunter from his first trip to the West in 1896 and his first trip to Taos in 1912." (M.R. Grauer, W. Herbert Dunton: A Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, Canyon, Texas, 1991, p. 11)

According to Michael R. Grauer, "Roping a Wolf (Roping a Lobo) is part of a group of paintings Dunton created between about 1912 and 1918...Having been a studio painter formerly, Dunton felt he needed to promote himself as a plein-air (and therefore avant-garde) painter after 1912...Consequently, Dunton's paintings done between 1912 and 1918 usually show much more obvious and expressive brushwork...Roping a Wolf (Roping a Lobo) also shows the influence of Frederic Remington on Dunton's work...[as it] pays tribute to Remington's 'action' paintings." (unpublished letter, 2006)