Rough Sport in Yo-Semite

 

James David Smillie

  1833 - 1909 (biography)

1882  

etching 

4 1/2 x 6 3/4" platemark 

unsigned 

only known signed proof - see Wittoft 23 

plate signed, titled, dated "no 20" 

Smillie 20; Witthoft 23 

very fine fibrous laid 

proof 

artist 

BC218 

$900.00 

The first of three etchings Smillie did of an event he witnessed in Yosemite in 1871 and wrote about in Picturesque America. This image is based on a drawing he did for the publication, illustrated on page 482. This is the only known signed impression of this print Brucia Wittoft writes in the catalog raisonne, page 111: "JDS first portrayed the subject in William Cullen Bryant's Picturesque America, Vol I (1872) pp. 463-495. The only artist to write his own descriptive essay in these famous volumes, Smillie had struggled with the word but his numerous illustrations flowed easily from his 1871 store of sketches in pen and oil. 'Horse Racing', depicted at the bottom of page 482, was a rough and ready Sunday entertainment. Smillie described the affair in detail on pp. 486-88: 'There were no saddles; the riders...rode with only a sheepskin or a bit of blanket under them...The word was given; the horses plunged, started, 'bucked';...An unlimited amount of profanity expressed the impatience of the crowd...At last they came...a cloud of dust, rattling hoofs, and frantic riders plying their whips...the crowd capering, screaming and 'hollerin' like so many madmen.'" The horse races were bet on heavily and the riders were tied to the horses which could be fatal if a horse stumbled. Note that the last rider in the group appears to be the artist.