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Earl W. Bascom

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Earl W. Bascom (June_19, 1906 - August_28, 1995) was an American-Canadian painter and sculptor who portrayed his own cowboy experiences of the American and Canadian Old West.

Contents

Cowboy of Cowboy Artists

Known as the "Cowboy of Cowboy Artists," he was born in a sod-roofed log cabin on the Bascom 101 Ranch in Vernal, Utah. He was raised on the Bascom Bar-B-3 Ranch in Alberta, Canada. His father, John W. Bascom, had been a deputy sheriff in Utah, who chased Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch Gang. Both of Earl's grandparents were Mormon pioneers and ranchers. Both of his grandfathers, Joel A. Bascom and C.F.B. Lybbert had been frontier lawmen.

Old West Experiences

Over a life time Earl Bascom had a wide range of western experiences as a professional bronc buster, cowpuncher, trail driver, blacksmith, freighter, wolf hunter, wild horse chaser, rodeo champion, cattle rancher, dude wrangler, and Hollywood actor.

Royal Heritage

As a child growing up, he was sometimes affectionately addressed by his British-born aunts as "Lord Bascom - King of the Canadian Cowboys," as he was a descendant of European Royalty.

Cowboy Experiences

Earl Bascom was "The Last of the Open-range Cowboy Artists," those who experienced the Old West before the end of free-range ranching. "I worked for some of the big open-range outfits from Purple Springs to the Sweetgrass Hills and Kicking Horse Creek to the Milk River Ridge and the Canadian Rockies. On one roundup some 7,000 horses were gathered in one bunch a mile wide. And the Knight Ranch dipped 18,000 head of cattle. "What a sight to see. The sight, the sounds, the smell I can still remember," Bascom reminisced.

For Earl Bascom, cowboy life was his life. "The life of a cowboy and the West, I know," he stated. He worked on some of the largest horse and cattle ranches in the United States and Canada - ranches that ran thousands of cattle on a million acres (4000 km²) of land. He broke and trained hundreds of horses. He worked on ranches where he chased and gathered horses, cows and even donkeys in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Mississippi, Washington, California and Canada. He worked on cattle drives out of the Rockies and horse drives through the Teton Mountains. He took part on large roundups of horses and cattle, and brandings. He made saddles and stirrups, quirts, chaps, spurs, bridles and bits, ropes and hackamores, and even patched his own boots.

Rodeo Experiences

An all-around rodeo champion working four events - bull riding, saddle bronc riding, bareback riding and steer decorating or steer wrestling - he has been inducted into several Halls of Fame in Canada and the United States. He gained international acclaim for his rodeo equipment inventions and designs.

Rodeo Inventions

Earl Bascom is listed as one of the world's most famous excogitators and inventors of all time. In 1922, Bascom invented and made rodeo's first hornless bronc saddle. In 1924, he invented and made rodeo's first one-hand bareback rigging. In 1926, he designed and made rodeo's first high-cut chaps. Today, each of these remains the standard rodeo gear used world-wide. Earl also made a rodeo exercizer in 1928.

Rodeo Bucking Chute

Earl Bascom, with his rodeoing brothers - Raymond, Melvin and Weldon - and their father, John, helped pioneer the sport of rodeo. Known as the "Bronc Bustin' Bascom Boys" they made, following Earl's design, rodeo's first side-delivery bucking chute in 1916. In 1919, Earl redesigned the chute making rodeo's first reverse-opening side-delivery bucking chute. The Bascom bucking chute design remains the standard in rodeo arenas around the world.

Rodeo's First Night Rodeo

Earl and Weldon produced the first night rodeo held outdoors under electric lights in 1935 in Columbia, Mississippi. In 1936, Earl designed and directed the building of the first permanent rodeo arena with bucking chutes and grandstands in the state of Mississippi.

Rodeo Clown

Besides being a serious minded and professional rodeo contestant, Earl had a funny bone or two as he tried his hand as a rodeo clown and rodeo bullfighter. Just after his 89th birthday, Earl was honored as the oldest living rodeo clown in the world.

Rodeo Career

Earl Bascom rodeoed from 1916 to 1940 and had memberships in the Cowboys Turtle Association, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the Canadian Rodeo Cowboys Association (now the Canadian Pro Rodeo Association)and the National Police Rodeo Association.

Childhood Art

Wanting to be an artist since childhood, Earl Bascom filled the pages of his school books in the one-room school house he attended with cowboy scenes. He quit school while in grade three to work on the Hyssop 5H Ranch, but a Canadian Mountie marched him back to the class room. He stayed in school after he got the job of driving an old stagecoach each day to the surrounding ranches transporting fellow students to and from school.

Russell and Remington

Earl Bascom’s desire to be a cowboy artist was greatly enhanced after seeing art works of the two great icons of western art, Charles M. Russell and Frederic S. Remington. Both Russell and Remington were cousins to Earl’s father. Charlie Russell was on the Knight Ranch when Earl was working there. Charlie had drawn a sketch on the bunkhouse wall and he finished a large oil painting of Ray Knight. That painting showed Ray on his favorite mount, Blue Bird, roping a steer.

Correspondence Art Course

Although Earl never completed a full year of school except for one year and never finished high school, he never lost his desire to be an artist. He subscribed to a correspondence art course wherein both Russell and Remington gave instructions on their drawing techniques. “Through those art lessons these two masters of western art were my first real art teachers,” Earl recalled. “In fact the only instructions I ever had in western art were from Remington and Russell.” Earl Bascom was related by blood to Frederic Remington through his mother, Clarissa Bascom Sackrider Remington, as well as to Charlie Russell through his mother, Mary Elizabeth Mead Russell.

Olympian's Influence

But try as he may, punching cows from dawn to dark didn’t leave much time to finish his art courses. Things were about to change. While working for the Nilsson Rafter-E-N Ranch, Earl happened to read a story in a western magazine about the Indian Jim Thorpe. Thorpe was a horse wrangler, but got fired, as the story goes. But cowboy life was all he knew and now he didn’t know what to do. The camp cook gave him some advice - go to school. Thorpe took that advice, went to school, excelled in sports and became an Olympic champion.

Jim Thorpe’s life touched Earl Bascom’s. “I felt like I had walked in his boots,” Earl confessed. “Like Jim Thorpe, cowboy life was the only life that I knew. But what about my art, what about art school?” Art is what he wanted so he quit punching cows and traded his lariat for the chance of an art school baccalaureate.

College Art Training

Even though he had no high school diploma the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah accepted him as a student in the fall of 1933. “There I was a 27 years old college freshman who hadn’t been to school in years,” Earl recalled. “I felt like a wild horse in a pen.” But his persistence was tough, taking every art course the college offered. He studied painting and drawing under professors E.H. Eastmond and B.F. Larsen, and sculpture under Torlief Knaphus.

College Rodeo

He graduated with adegree in Fine Art in 1940, having financed his college studies by rodeoing during the summer breaks. He has been named rodeo's "First Collegiate Cowboy.”

Mississippi Rodeo

Mixed in during his college years, Earl, along with his brother Weldon, produced the first rodeos in Columbia, Mississippi in 1935, 1936 and 1937, while they both worked for Hickman's B Bar H Ranch near Arm, Mississippi. It was Sam Hickman who financed the rodeos. Both Earl and Weldon won their greatest and prettiest rodeo prizes in Columbia, Mississippi – each gained a wife. Weldon married Rose Flynt in 1937, she being part Cherokee-Choctaw Indian. And Earl married Nadine Diffey in 1939, she being part Creek-Catawba Indian. They each raised five children.

Hollywood

After graduating from college and then retiring from rodeo, Earl Bascom moved to California where he pursued his art career, ranched and worked a bit in the movie industry, being in the Hollywood western, "Lawless Rider" starring his sister-in-law, Texas Rose Bascom. Later he did TV commercials with Roy Rogers and was in the documentary "Take Willy With You."

International Artist

Earl Bascom became internationally known as a cowboy artist and sculptor. His art has been exhibited in the United States, Canada and Europe. He was honored by the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Artists Association as the first rodeo cowboy to become a professional cowboy artist and sculptor. He was the first cowboy artist to be honored as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts of London, England. In the summer of 2005, the Earl W. Bascom Memorial Rodeo was held in Berlin, Germany by the European Rodeo Cowboys Association in honor of Earl Bascom and his world-wide influence upon the sport of rodeo.

Always one who had deep thoughts and religious leanings, Earl Bascom was ordained a Mormon Bishop later in life.

As the late cowboy celebrity Roy Rogers, who worked with Earl Bascom in TV commercials and was a collector of Bascom art, once said, “Earl Bascom is a walking book of history. His knowledge of the Old West was acquired the old fashioned way – he was born and raised in it.”

Philosophy

In life Earl Bascom followed his own philosophy – “If you want to be a champion bull rider, you have to ride the toughest bull.” Bascom rode the tough ones.

In his ninetieth year of life living on his ranch in Victorville, California, Earl Bascom waved his hat good-bye in his Grand Entry into that "Big Rodeo Arena in the Sky" on August 28, 1995 - a cowboy through and through.

See also

Art Heritage

Famous artists related by family bloodline to Earl Bascom include: Ruth H. Bascom, George Catlin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Daniel Chester French, Frederick Olmstead, Samuel F. B. Morse, Frederic S. Remington, Charles M. Russell, and Walt Disney.

Rodeo Championships

Honorary Titles

Tributes

Legacy

Honors

Sources

External links

 

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