James Bama "Winter Trapping" 1981 Signed Limited Edition Print 1384/1500, Greenwich Workshop

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A signature image from the artist who defined the modern West in paint. This is James Bama's "Winter Trapping," published … Read more A signature image from the artist who defined the modern West in paint. This is James Bama's "Winter Trapping," published by The Greenwich Workshop in 1981 as a limited edition of 1,500, hand signed and numbered 1384/1500 in pencil by the artist.

The subject is pure Bama: a mountain man in profile against a field of winter white, rendered with the photorealist precision that made him famous. Every texture is fully realized, from the scarlet wool capote with its fur collar to the steel beaver traps slung over his shoulder, the fur mittens, the feathered cap, and the quill-worked hide pouch at his belt. Bama painted the mountain-man rendezvous world around Cody, Wyoming from life, working from the re-enactors and working westerners who posed for him, and the result reads as both portrait and historical document.

James Bama (1926-2022) had two celebrated careers. Born in New York and trained at the Art Students League, he spent two decades as one of America's top illustrators, painting more than sixty Doc Savage paperback covers whose bronze hero became a pop-culture icon. In 1968 he left New York for the Wapiti valley outside Cody, Wyoming, and devoted the rest of his life to painting the contemporary West: mountain men, rodeo hands, sheepherders, and Native elders, in a hyperrealist style collectors have called the Vermeer of the West. His paintings are held by the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and major Western art collections, and his Greenwich Workshop editions were the gold standard of Western limited-edition publishing. Bama died in 2022, and his hand-signed editions are now a finite supply.

This example retains its original Greenwich Workshop presentation folder, printed in red with the publisher's Trumbull, Connecticut address, blind-embossed owl device, and the publisher's title stamp reading "Winter Trapping by James Bama." The print itself is a fine, richly colored impression with full margins and the printed publisher's copyright line at lower left.
A strong example of one of Bama's most collected mountain-man images, from the artist's classic Greenwich Workshop period. Ready to frame. See less