BILLINGS - The politician Theodore Roosevelt, Montana-based western artist Charles M. Russell and novelist Jack London of "The Call of the Wild" fame all have one thing in common - Philip R. Goodwin.
Although Goodwin's name may not sound familiar compared to these three well-known individuals, some of his paintings have become iconic works of art continually fetching higher and higher prices at auction.
His painting of an angler fighting a jumping fish from the front of a canoe, as his buddy in the back of the boat reaches for a rifle to take aim at a bull moose on the shoreline, sold for $968,000.
The painting, titled "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," sold last July at the Coeur d'Alene Art Auction with all of the proceeds donated to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, according to Larry Len Peterson.
Peterson, a Plentywood, Montana, native, is a writer and art historian who authored the book "Philip R. Goodwin: America's Sporting and Wildlife Artist," published in 2001. The book is a hefty treatise, weighing in at 12 pounds, he noted, while detailing the life of an extraordinary artist that some confine to a narrow genre, called predicament illustrations.
For example, the painting "Between Two Fires" depicts a black bear sow crossing a log over a stream followed by two cubs. The sow is leaping away from a porcupine on the log as two anglers approach. "Into New Country" shows two trappers strenuously battling a river's whitewater as they paddle a birchbark canoe.
Among his more well-known accomplishments, Goodwin illustrated Roosevelt's book "African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist" published in 1909. Peterson called it the "top sporting book of the generation," advocating the "manly outdoor life."
Between 1907 and 1910, Goodwin spent time with Russell at his Bull Head Lodge near Lake McDonald in what is now Glacier National Park. There he etched 16 wildlife scenes into the large fireplace.
"Russell learned a lot from Goodwin," Peterson said, influencing the untrained western artists "more than anybody."
As one-time chairman of the National Advisory Board to the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, and author of a book on Russell, Peterson should know.
"Nancy and Charlie idolized Goodwin," Peterson said of the artist's wife and devoted agent. "She was suspicious of other artists, but not Goodwin."
In 1903 at age 22, Goodwin created an illustration for a book titled "The Wolf," showing the author's main character, Buck, fighting a wolf pack leader.
With the title changed to "The Call of the Wild," it sold a million copies and launched London's writing career while bringing greater notoriety to Goodwin's talent for capturing animals.
Although illustrators of Goodwin's era were considered "second-hand painters," Peterson said their works are incredibly popular. As an example, Peterson pointed to Russell's highest-selling painting "Piegans" garnering $5.6 million. Norman Rockwell, who had 323 illustrations on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, produced art that has sold for as much as $45 million.
Peterson likened an artist's work being published on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post to an Academy Award. Goodwin's paintings were featured on three Post covers.
"He's the hottest Western artist right now," Peterson said, with works selling for $500,000 to $600,000, an increase in auction prices steeper than any other western painter.
"Everybody loves Goodwin," he added, partly because of the nostalgia of that early 1900s era, but also because his depictions resonated with "little boys" growing up in the 1950s who went on to become "millionaires and billionaires" who decorate their ranches with Western art.
Perhaps one of Goodwin's most familiar paintings depicts a Pony Express rider galloping atop his horse at full tilt while cradling a rifle. The image was created in 1919 but didn't become popular until Winchester Repeating Arms began using it as a logo for the company.
Following World War I, according to a 2016 article by Christopher Yurkanin, Winchester was looking for a new corporate image. Goodwin's Horse and Rider has "lasted as the Winchester (and American) symbol ever since," he wrote.
Born in 1881 in Connecticut, Goodwin's talent for drawing was immediately recognized by his parents. His first illustration was published in Collier's magazine when he was only 11 years old. At 14, his parents enrolled him in the Rhode Island School of Design.
"He soon caught the eye of America's most famous illustrator, Howard Pyle, who taught such greats as Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, Harvey Dunn, Frank Schoonover, W.H.D. Koerner, and Frank Stick," Peterson wrote in his 2021 book, "The American West Reimagined." "Pyle started the Brandywine School in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania where many of the great illustrators would study over the years. Goodwin was training there as a teenager ahead of N.C. Wyeth."
Eric Rossborough stumbled across Goodwin's works while working in a Wisconsin library. The library was throwing away a bin of books, one of which was titled "Great Sporting Posters of the Golden Age."
Rossborough, who now works at the McCracken Research Library in Cody, Wyoming, cut out illustrations from the book to decorate his apartment while also covering holes in the walls.
"The weird thing is that, after I had cut out the pictures I liked the best, I realized they were all by the same guy, Philip R. Goodwin," Rossborough wrote in an article for the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. "Then I came out here and find I've come to work in a library that owns this guy's letters, and in a museum that has his original art and notebooks."
The collection of letters, donated by Goodwin's sister-in-law Neva, included a disheartening communication from a Minnesota-based calendar company looking to hire the talented artist.
"We wish you would make a couple sketches of the following - show the same two trappers that we have had in the past, with the red and blue shirts, then have a young boy with the same type of an outfit, probably brown shirt, who has just been taken along on his first trip into the woods.
"Show these trappers with the boy assisting in building a log cabin on some spot overlooking a lake. Then introduce a bit of animal life and action, possibly a bear and its cubs, rounding a corner somewhere, or in some playful action, at least adding some human interest to the picture itself ... Then if you have any other ideas you want to send along, do so."
The letter prompted Rossborough to wonder, "What would this be like, as an accomplished artist, to have to cater to such programmatic demands?"
Goodwin can also be found in a 1914 advertisement touting Tuxedo tobacco, "that is good for your nerves."
In 1929, the Daily Times of Mamaroneck, New York, wrote a story calling Goodwin "the dean of artist's colony" in the Long Island community, despite most of his work at the time being "commercial painting" for calendars.
The article revealed how Goodwin would use details from a variety of locations or trips to blend into one of his paintings, sometimes using photographs. After a preliminary watercolor, "which itself often takes days in preparation," Goodwin would then use that to make a charcoal outline on a large canvas. After coating the canvas with shellac, oil paint would be applied.
"Every gesture and pose of the human figures depicted is intended to convey a meaning, and sometimes a whole adventure is described in a single picture," the reporter noted.
When encountering problems, Goodwin would delay his painting, sometimes for days, until he could solve the issue.
"Mr. Goodwin's motto in life is thoroughness, sometimes it takes him several months to complete a picture, but rather than allow his work to deteriorate in a single portrait from the consistent quality of his output, he is ready to sacrifice time and money," the news story said.
Unfortunately for Goodwin and many other artists, the Great Depression left him destitute and relegated to renting out his home while living in a backyard studio with his dog. He never married, living with his mother until she died.
At the age of 54, Goodwin was found unconscious on the floor of his studio, later dying of pneumonia at a local hospital.
No detailed obituaries were penned in his honor, although a one-paragraph death notice did highlight his connection to Roosevelt.
"I think Goodwin reflected Theodore Roosevelt's call to young Americans to lead the strenuous life," Peterson said, noting his monthslong trips to Canada, Maine and Montana provided fodder for his work.
Particularly appealing to Peterson was that many of Goodwin's predicament paintings involved two friends out in nature.
"My original title for this was the lost life of Philip Goodwin," Rossborough said of his article. "And I thought, you know, how can someone who's pulling huge money in, this famous 90 years after his death, be considered lost?"