Two riders move across a desert landscape mottled by dark green sage. Above, monumental flat-bottomed clouds stretch upward in a brilliant blue sky. Behind, ancient buttes rendered in terra cotta hues and dark blue shadows stretch the length of the composition. In this painting aptly titled Cloud World, American artist Maynard Dixon (1875–1946) demonstrates his ability to depict the vast spaces and minute details of desert landscapes through rich color and thoughtful framing. Dixon’s friend Wilbur Hall summed up the impact of the artist’s work well when he wrote: “What he paints best is something so big that you have to live with it to get it. Mountains, deserts, with people of such places, are his subjects. I think I know my West some, but to realize how big and splendid and free and magnificent and God-made it really is, once in awhile, I have to look on Maynard Dixon’s pictures.”
Maynard Dixon, Cloud World, 1925. Oil paint on canvas; 34 × 62 in. Denver Art Museum: Funds from the LARRK Foundation, Tom and Jane Petrie, and Craig and Nicole Harrison, with funds, by exchange, from the Peck Collection, Harmsen Collection, Roath Collection, and the Art American Purchase Fund, 2025.433
Born in Fresno, Dixon spent much of his early life in California and developed a successful career as an illustrator for regional publications. At the turn of the twentieth century, he began taking long excursions throughout the greater West, including to the deserts of the Southwest. In 1907, reeling from the devastating effects of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that had destroyed his studio, Dixon moved to New York City and produced illustrations for national publications. He returned to San Francisco in 1912 and focused on easel painting. Inspired by a 1925 trip to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, Cloud World presents a combination of a traditional subject with modern influences. Towards the end of his life, Dixon split his time between southern Utah and Arizona among the desert vistas that most inspired him.
Cloud World is known to have been exhibited during Dixon’s lifetime before being purchased by Tucson-based collector Clay Lockett (1906–1984) in 1943. In 1976, Lockett lent the painting to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where it was presented in the exhibition The Natural Paradise alongside Southwest landscapes by Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe. After Lockett’s death, the painting was purchased by William Ruger (co-founder of Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc.) and passed down through the family until 2025, when it was purchased by the Petrie Institute of Western American Art at the DAM with the enthusiastic participation of DAM trustees Craig Harrison and Tom Petrie. The painting boasts a provenance straight to the artist and an impressive track record of exhibitions. Now, for the first time, Cloud World is on continuous view to the public within the DAM’s western American art galleries on the seventh floor of the Martin Building.
