“Contemporary western art owes a major debt of gratitude to Bob Lougheed.”

Follow The Sun:
Robert Lougheed

~ By Don Hedgpeth

The most recent biography from Don Hedgpeth and the Oklahoma University Press explores the life of a remarkable western artist.

The supremely gifted Robert Lougheed was a visual historian whose work bridged the transition from the Old West to the new.

In the world of communications, he is known as the man behind Mobil Oil Company’s legendary flying Pegasus and as the creator of numerous magazine covers familiar to a generation of readers.

Yet even when fully engaged in such commissioned work, Robert Lougheed never ceased to paint for himself, capturing the timeless realities of rural life, while never drawing a divide between the two.

Both were about expressing the essence and particularity of existence on a burgeoning continent - and in capturing the spirit of the times, Lougheed was a true “painter’s painter.”

MORE THAN FOUR HUNDRED FULL-COLOUR REPRODUCTIONS.

Follow the Sun is the first book to showcase the full breadth of Lougheed’s artistic legacy. More than four hundred full-colour reproductions trace his trajectory from early Canadian studies of working horses to commercial work to western scenes and timeless plein-air oils of European subjects, with much in between.

A quiet, confident man dedicated to painting, Robert Lougheed was born in 1910 and grew up on a farm in Ontario, Canada, the reins of a working horse in one hand and a drawing pencil in the other. After a youthful stint as a newspaper illustrator for the Toronto Star, he studied in New York with Dean Cornwell and Frank Vincent DuMond of the famed Art Students League.

RECOGNIZED BY THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF WESTERN ART.

After earning a place among renowned illustrators, Lougheed joined the Cowboy Artists of America and helped found the National Academy of Western Art. Both honoured him with multiple awards. He painted prolifically abroad, bringing back scores of fresh oils, watercolours, and sketches from France and England.

Wherever he travelled—the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Alaska, or the American Southwest—he painted incessantly. He mentored many young artists, schooling them in his “creative truth,” which included the necessity of creating from life rather than photographs. Wherever he went, he found horses, and he honoured them through his art.

Author Don Hedgpeth makes clear why “contemporary western art owes a major debt of gratitude to Bob Lougheed.” This book takes a long stride toward repaying that debt and introduces a remarkable artist to any who have not yet had the pleasure.

Freelance writer and western historian Don Hedgpeth is founding editor of Persimmon Hill, the journal of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, and the author or co-author of more than a dozen books, including Traildust: Cowboys, Cattle, and Country: The Art of James Reynolds and Howard Terpning: Spirit of the Plains People.

A fifth-generation Texan, he lives near San Antonio.