Lot 31: Armin Carl Hansen (1886-1957) Cowboy Sport (Bulldogging) 16 x 20in overall: 23 1/2 x 27 1/2in US$ 70,000 - 100,000

Armin Carl Hansen (1886-1957)
Cowboy Sport (Bulldogging) signed 'ARMIN HANSEN' (lower right), titled and inscribed 'Salina [sic] Rodeo / by / Armin Hansen / Monterey Co.' in the artist's hand (on the reverse) oil on canvas board16 x 20inoverall: 23 1/2 x 27 1/2in

ProvenanceProperty sold to benefit a California institution.In a 1932 review of Hansen's work, a writer for the Los Angeles Examiner wrote: "He does not pause for the niceties of polishing touches and his work is the stronger for this spontaneity." Hansen's best work always treads at the edge of speed and fidelity to his subject without overworking his material. This aggressive and confident style is often reflected in the intrepidness of his subjects. Armin Hansen formally trained in San Francisco and Europe, afterwards working as a crew member on North Sea trawlers and painting fishing scenes, maritime seascapes, and picturesque villages of the coast. His experience with the resilient and hardworking seafaring community became a repeated theme in his artistic representations. Hansen made a good living as a painter in the 1920s. Demand for his work was strong and his career seemed solid. However, the stock market crash of 1929 hit Hansen as much as every other American. Not only did his savings disappear, so did his patronage. In late November of that year, he wrote to his Los Angeles dealer Earl Stendahl, "When last I wrote you I was just about broke —— now I am." In an effort to survive the difficult Depression years, Hansen exhibited as much as he could, took on as many commissions as he was offered (both with portrait as well as mural projects), and painted "everything, anything" to make ends meet. Los Angeles reviewer Arthur Millier noted the broadened array of his work, writing "Hansen comes ashore, too, and paints or etches a rodeo or the hills back from Monterey. And he has gentle moments when he paints delicate still lifes of glass and tableware." Hansen had painted rodeo subjects before. He produced his first rodeo compositions in 1913, after a friend took him to a rodeo in Salinas, just East of Monterey. In 1930, he reintroduced the subject in a Los Angeles exhibition, which stood out among his marines and led a reviewer to declare that Hansen had "gone western." In Cowboy Sport (Bulldogging) Hansen frames the scene for the viewer with a delineated audience leaning against a fence. They are casually attentive but lack the tension of the riders. Their passive participation echoes the experience of a viewer of the painting, only they find themselves at the edge of a cloud of dust. Just above this audience, Hansen's focus is on the chaotic movement of the horsemen and the brown haze kicked up in their wake. Almost lost amongst tan clouds of dust, like Hansen's boats tossed on the waves of the Pacific, a number of additional horsemen can be discerned in the distance coming towards the viewer. Compositionally the work is divided into two horizontal lines but the mastery is in Hansen's snapshot of the spur-of-the-moment movement - all the more gripping by what he leaves obscured.