Harold Dow Bugbee

{{Short description|American painter (1900–1963)}} {{Infobox person |name = Harold Dow Bugbee |image = |image_size = |caption = Harold Dow Bugbee |birth_date = {{Birth date |1900|8|15}} |birth_place = Lexington, Massachusetts, US |death_date={{death date and age|1963|3|27|1900|8|15}} |death_place=Clarendon, Texas, US |occupation=Artist; Curator of Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas |spouse=(1) {{marriage|Katherine Patrick Bugbee|1935}} (divorced)<br/> (2) {{marriage|Olive Freda Vandruff Bugbee|1961|1963}} }}

'''Harold Dow Bugbee''' (August 15, 1900 – March 27, 1963) was an American Western artist, illustrator, painter, and curator of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas.<ref name=PPHM>Bugbee exhibit, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas</ref> Bugbee sought with considerable success to become the dominant artist of the Texas South Plains, as his role model, Charles M. Russell of Montana, accordingly sketched life of the northern Great Plains.

==Early years and education== Bugbee was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, to Charles H. Bugbee and the former Grace L. Dow. In 1914, the family moved to the Texas Panhandle at the suggestion of a cousin, cattleman T.S. Bugbee, and established a ranch near Clarendon, the seat of Donley County east of Amarillo. As a youth, Bugbee began sketching the multiple facets of ranch life hoping to preserve for posterity a rapidly vanishing way of life. His own experiences offered keen insight into ranch living in the Panhandle. Bugbee graduated from Clarendon High School in 1917 and attended then Methodist-affiliated Clarendon College, since a public community college. In 1918, he enrolled at Texas A&M University at College Station.<ref>[http://www.askart.com/askart/b/harold_dow_bugbee/harold_dow_bugbee.aspx Harold Bugbee - Artist, Art - Harold Dow Bugbee]</ref>

Bugbee spent many summers at the Taos art colony in Taos, New Mexico, where Bert Geer Phillips urged him to attend the Cumming School of Art in Des Moines, to study under the portrait painter Charles Atherton Cumming, who had established the art department at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. In 1921, he completed in two years a four-year curriculum at the Cumming school.<ref name="PPHM"/> In annual trips to Taos, Bugbee painted with W. Herbert Dunton, Leon Gaspard, Frank Hoffman, and Ralph Meyers. He often went camping in the Rockies to get a close-up view of nature.<ref name=tfaoi>[http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa628.htm Those Who Came Before Us: The Indian Murals of H. D. Bugbee]</ref>

==Artistic career== Bugbee returned to West Texas in 1921. His early patron was Ernest O. Thompson,<ref name=ssdi>[http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi Social Security Death Index Interactive Search]</ref> a hotel owner, Amarillo mayor, and later, long-serving member of the Texas Railroad Commission. Thompson commissioned 14 oil paintings for the Longhorn Room of his prestigious Amarillo Hotel. He also sponsored Bugbee's first large art showing. In 1942, Thompson authorized Bugbee to paint 11 murals for the Tascosa Room of his Herring Hotel. Bugbee sold paintings to both ranchers and Western art collectors. He also sketched Christmas card designs available internationally.<ref name=hbook>[http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbu14 Handbook of Texas Online - BUGBEE, HAROLD DOW]</ref>

In 1933, Bugbee began illustrating pen-and-ink sketches for books, magazines such as ''Ranch Romances'', ''Western Stories'', ''Country Gentleman'', and ''Field and Stream'',<ref name=tfaoi/> and also historical editions of local and regional newspapers. He also illustrated such trade publications as ''The Shamrock'' and 34 issues of the ''Panhandle-Plains Historical Review''. Starting in 1936, with the publication of ''Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman'', a biography of legendary cattleman Charles Goodnight, Bugbee began an enduring association with West Texas historian J. Evetts Haley. He also did the illustrations for Willie N. Lewis' ''Between Sun and the Sod'', S. Omar Barker's ''Songs of the Saddleman'',<ref name=tfaoi/> James R. Gober's ''Cowboy Justice: Tale of a Texas Lawman'',<ref>[http://www.bokfynd.nu/0896724506.html Cowboy Justice: Tale of a Texas Lawman - Jämför priser och köp!]</ref> and Rufe O'Keefe's ''Cowboy Life''.<ref>{{cite book|last1=O'Keefe|first1=Rufe|title=Cowboy Life|url=https://archive.org/details/cowboyliferemini00okee|date=1936|publisher=Naylor|location=San Antonio, Texas}}</ref> During this period, Bugbee exhibited his work in Clarendon and other Texas cities, as well as in Kansas City, Missouri, Chicago, Denver, and New York City.<ref name=hbook/> He was a popular fixture too at the Tri-State Fair (Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico) held annually in Amarillo.<ref name=tfaoi/>

[[File:Bugbee studio IMG 0084.JPG|right|thumb|<span style="font-size:100%;">Replica of the Harold Dow Bugbee art studio at the Panhandle–Plains Historical Museum</span>]]

In 1951, Bugbee became the art curator for the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society. This part-time position, which he retained until his death, permitted him to devote much of his time to painting. Another artist featured at Panhandle-Plains was Frank Reaugh, an Illinois native, who painted scenes similar to those adopted by Bugbee. Bugbee sold or donated more than 230 paintings, drawings, and prints to the society's museum in Canyon,<ref>{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rtRFyFO4hpEC&q=Harold+Dow+Bugbee&pg=PA112 | title=Encyclopedia of the Great Plains| isbn=0803247877| last1=Wishart| first1=David J.| year=2004| publisher=U of Nebraska Press}}</ref> the seat of Randall County south of Amarillo. Bugbee completed 22 murals on Indian life<ref name=tfaoi/> and ranching for the museum, the greatest of which is ''The Cattleman'' (1934), underwritten with a grant from the Federal Arts Project of the New Deal. His trail-driving scene of Texas cattleman R. B. Masterson, painted on wood panels, hangs in the Texas Hall of State in Dallas.<ref name=hbook/>

One of Bugbee's designs, which depicts Texas Longhorns and a cowboy crossing the Red River at Doan's Crossing north of Vernon, is featured on the 1931 Trail Driver's Monument at the ghost town of Doans, where the postmaster Corwin F. Doan also operated a store to supply the cowboys.<ref>Thomas Lindsay Baker, ''Ghost Towns of Texas'' (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986).</ref> Since 1884, Doan's May Picnic has been held on the first Saturday of May at Doans. A barbecue lunch and T-shirts are available for sale, and a king and queen are crowned at the event. Riders cross the river each year from Oklahoma, and usually arrive just before noon. The 1881 adobe house, the oldest in Wilbarger County, is open for tours during the picnic.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.doansmaypicnic.com|title=Doan's May Picnic|publisher=doansmaypicnic.com|access-date=May 3, 2017}}]</ref>

==Military and family life== In 1942, Bugbee was drafted into the United States Army at age 41, but was discharged after a year because of health problems. He served in the Army Engineer Corps.<ref>[https://www.newspapers.com/image/44255184/ "Harold Bugbee Honored Friday For Paintings"], ''The Canyon News'', Canyon, Texas, May 18, 1955, section 2.</ref> He was in the Special Services Division at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, but no record of his works on the base have been found.<ref>Freeman, Joe C. and Rushing, William. [https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA331680.pdf "Documentation of Mural Building 4720 U.S. Army Field Artillery Center Fort Sill Military Reservation, Oklahoma"], report for Environmental Division, Directorate of Public Works, Fort Sill Military Reservation, Fort Sill, Oklahoma and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Tulsa District, Fort Sill Military Reservation Technical Series Report of Investigations Number 5, Geo-Marine, Inc., Plano, Texas, November 1995, page 10.</ref> He painted three murals for Amarillo Army Air Field in 1943; two of the three are in the National Museum of American Art, a part of the Smithsonian Institution.<ref name=hbook/>

In 1935, Bugbee married the former Katherine Patrick (1904–1991); they divorced, and she died in Los Angeles.<ref name=ssdi/> In 1961, Bugbee married the former Olive Freda Vandruff (1908–2003),<ref name=ssdi/> the daughter of Ross Elliott Vandruff and the former Mayme L. Buskirk. Olive, an artist in her own right, whose clients included U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde, did not remarry. She lived thereafter, and died at the age of 94, on the Harold Dow Bugbee Ranch in Clarendon. Bugbee died in Clarendon at the age of 62, 40 years before Olive's death. The estate, valued at $1 million, was donated on Olive's death to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. Olive left the ranch largely as she found it when she moved there in 1961.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.clarendononline.com/news/2003/1120/story_1.htm |title=The Clarendon Enterprise |access-date=2008-05-05 |archive-date=2008-05-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516004820/http://www.clarendononline.com/news/2003/1120/story_1.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Bugbee exhibited in 1929 at Dalhart in the northwestern Panhandle, in Amarillo (1930, 1931, and 1938), in Abilene (1931), the University of Texas Centennial Exposition in Austin (1936), the Fort Worth Frontier Exposition (1936), and the West Texas Art Exhibition at Fort Worth (1939). His work was featured in exhibitions at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in 1953, 1961, and posthumously, in 1970, 1987, and 1994. In 1990, the museum unveiled a reconstruction of Bugbee's studio.<ref name=PPHM/> His exhibits were presented in 1992 at the Nita Stewart Haley Library at Midland and in 1993 at the Cattleman's Museum in Fort Worth.<ref name=hbook/> Also, a Bugbee exhibit is at the Saints' Roost Museum in Clarendon.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Wheatly |first=Morgan |date=2016-06-08 |title=Bugbee work showcased - Clarendon Live |url=https://www.clarendonlive.com/2016/06/bugbee-work-showcased/ |access-date=2026-03-17 |website=www.clarendonlive.com |language=en-US}}</ref>

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *{{find a Grave|17410817}} {{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bugbee, Harold Dow}} Category:1900 births Category:1963 deaths Category:20th-century American painters Category:American male painters Category:Texas A&M University alumni Category:American modern artists Category:Artists from Texas Category:Ranchers from Texas Category:20th-century American illustrators Category:Clarendon College (Texas) alumni Category:People from Lexington, Massachusetts Category:People from Amarillo, Texas Category:People from Donley County, Texas Category:United States Army soldiers Category:20th-century American male artists