Bill Gollings: Lonesome Cowboy Artist

By Author: Harris Symonds
Total Articles: 121
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If William E. Gollings (1878-1932), known to all as Bill, had been a country and western singer, he would have been a practitioner of what is known as the high lonesome. If Bill Gollings had been an Indian at a Pow Wow, his would have been the high voice of the brave that rises from the drumming and chanting. Golling is distinct, direct, independent, plaintive, but never defeated, not as long as he can sing about it.

The best of Bill Gollings’s paintings, those that have nothing of the gun-for-hire illustration or commission about them, are songs, songs in the rhythms of the seasons, songs in the key of the lonesome cowboy, songs in the rhythms of Indian camps, songs in the key of the rapidly evaporating West.

In Cheyenne Winter Camp the weariness of the woman bearing water to the camp is counterbalanced by the relief of the shaggy ponies who have come to the end of their day. They have waited their turn while the woman cut a hole in the ice. Water drips from the winter hair that fringes their mouths. In the distance, a rider makes his way in, drawn to the promise of companionable shelter.

A cold day. ...
... Bound to be a colder night. The pinks and oranges of the setting sun are illusory. The slash of reflected orange on the door flap of the nearest tepee is a herald of warmth. The horses in the foreground vie for water. Winter is a story of survival. The woman bearing the bucket links the top and bottom of the painting. She and the Indian on the pony converge on the tepee in the foreground. The tepees, their poles mirroring the barren trees, project into the sky. Water, earth, sky, the fire of the setting sun, sun soon to be extinguished by night, replaced by the fire of the camp. Still time, the painting seems to say. Night hasn’t fallen yet.

Time to gather round the fire.

Bill Gollings was a loner by temperament, humble by nature, far more interested in painting than in the business of painting. By 1922, the year Cheyenne Winter Camp was painted, he had absorbed the lessons of his teachers and peers. From Frank Stick at the Art Institute of Chicago, Gollings had learned the rudiments of composition and the art of narrative painting. His friendship with the great etcher Hans Kleiber had improved his drawing. Perhaps most of all, his study of the American Impressionists and the comradely criticism he received from his neighbor—Taos Founder Joseph Sharp—had caused him to be more at home with color and light. Though he would experiment with color to the end of his life, the Gollings who painted Cheyenne Winter Camp was thoroughly at home with his pallette.

But, in the end, Gollings is Gollings, a solitary high lonesome voice rising out of the Wyoming winds.

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