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Harold Buck Weaver

Harold was the eldest of ten sons and two daughters born to Alfred Edward and Rosetta Hannah Weaver. His childhood was spent in Clapham and whilst still a child ran away to France to become a jockey, the which he didn't like - then ran away to sea while still in his teens and served on Windjammers: finally ended up in California in the Gold Rush.

Worked as a Cowboy: a lost photograph depicts him wearing a pair of low slung six-guns with the holsters tied down, this apparently is the hallmark of a gun slinger. Also employed as a teamster, a Deputy Sheriff and eventually ended up as a champion steer and bronco-buster.

Sometime around 1920 Buck broke his pelvis after failing to break an animal in a competition and was in hospital for an extended period. As occupational therapy he started to paint.

Having come from a long line of artists (painter Weavers recorded way back to the end of the 17th century) he revealed a very considerable natural talent which matured under the tutorage of Maynard-Dixon, who became a life-long friend.

He quickly established himself as a West Coast artist who worked for extended periods in the High Sierras of the Arizona deserts and the area now known as the Painted Desert - he lived with the Hopi and the Navajo Indians, learning their lore and their languages - his studio was based in San Francisco but it was often untenanted: his mobile studio was a caravan!

In addition to painting, his contact with Edgar Payne at Laguna Beach provided him with the tools to make carved and gold leaf frames.

He possessed what has been described as a phenomenal technique and was renowned for his spare, carefully chosen use of colour normally using only four or five different tubes of colour, seldom using one colour without small quantities of all the others mixed with it.

His canvases are recorded as being simple, truthful statements of his knowledge and vision of the Western landscape. His keen appreciation and portrayal of light, atmosphere and weather were said to be second to none while his sense of space and its reflection in composition and balance was almost uncanny - he worked painstakingly slowly and after weeks, even months, he completed "harmonies of design and colour in complete accord with the laws of nature".

Buck worked on the Santa Fe Railroad murals in the ticket office along with Edith Hamlin and Ray Stron under Maynard Dixon's guidance, the Golden Gates Exposition murals and the New York State World's Fair murals - some, even if not all, with Maynard Dixon. Harry James and his wife, Betty Grable were reputed to have bought a great many of his pictures, the collection being broken up on their deaths. (the fate of the pictures is not known to this author).

Biography Courtesy of www.haroldbuckweaver.com

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