About the Artist 

Buckley “Buck” Nimy (1906 or 1911-1959) was born in Rice, Arizona. He said he grew up in Arizona before running off to the Black Hills of South Dakota to take up life as a cowboy. Various accounts mention that he also spent time in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and western Canada. His days in Nevada began in the mid-1920s when found work on ranches in Pine Valley, Eureka County, and Paradise Valley north of Winnemucca.

Life as a ranch hand and “all-around cowboy” would be a lifelong inspiration for Nimy’s artwork. He may have been influenced by the work of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell, but in terms of style he is most likened to fellow Nevada artist Will James.

Much like the drawings he created, Nimy’s path to becoming an artist in earnest is a story out of the Old West: On April 17, 1935, he was arrested and charged with attempting to rob a shipment of bullion on the Austin-Round Mountain Stage, a bus line in central Nevada. Nimy backed out of the robbery at the last minute, but he apparently confessed to the plan and was hauled off to prison. Some believed he had been “railroaded.”

In the solitude of his cell, Nimy sketched his companions on the backs of envelopes. His worn crayon and pencil stubs also brought to life scenes he knew all too well—riding through the sagebrush, whirling high in the air on the back of an untamed horse, leading the herd home at night while the sun was setting.

During nearly 13 months of incarceration, Nimy became editor of The Rainbow prison magazine, doing full color covers, editorial cartoons, pen and ink illustrations for articles written by other inmates, and advertisement illustrations for the prison store. His work in prison impressed the warden, and when Nimy came before the Board of Pardons his case for release was approved.

After prison, Nimy set out for Buckhorn, near Austin, where he found work in a mine. There, he developed his artistic talent with new vigor and saved enough money to make a run as a dedicated artist. A breakthrough came when he traveled to Chicago to place a drawing on exhibition. The showing was so well received that he was given a second opportunity to exhibit his familiar western scenes in J. W. Young Galleries.

His experience in Chicago proved so successful that Nimy took several sketches to Reno to have them reproduced on postcards. Shortly afterward he toured the western states, placing the cards in nearly every small town drugstore, hotel and restaurant he visited. It wasn’t long before the postcards were reportedly selling by the thousands each month. Nimy completed several more sketches of familiar western scenes near Lovelock, where he next made his home. More postcards followed—all scenes of Nevada—and Nimy soon found himself being called the “Cowboy Artist.”

By the late 1940s he was living in San Francisco, but maintained his contacts in Nevada. From time to time he took part in advertising and public relations campaigns in Winnemucca and Lovelock. Other initiatives involved artwork for posters, pamphlets, calendars, and perhaps some billboards along Highway 40, nearly all of which featured Old West themes.

Those who knew Nimy variously described him as happy-go-lucky, inclined to hang around saloons with his pad and pencil, aloof on occasion, but always obsessively involved with his art. The themes that best characterize his art—cowboys, rodeo, ranch life, horses, prospectors, freighting outfits, and Indians—are some indication that he was not really living in his own time.

When he settled in San Francisco during the 1950s Nimy was still in the postcard business. He died there on October 4, 1959. Nimy was never known to have married by those who knew him.

Sources include: “Buck Nimy, Cowboy Artist,” by Phillip I. Earl, Nevada in the West Magazine, Winter, 2011; Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Volume 37, Spring 1994, Number 1; Reno Gazette-Journal, 25 April, 1935; Nevada State Journal, 21 March, 1937.  

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