About the work

Ernest Chiriacka (1913-2010) began his career—as did many important western artists—as an illustrator for national magazines. His work appeared regularly in the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and Cosmopolitan, among many others.

After achieving considerable success as an illustrator, Chiriacka devoted his time and talent to portraying various aspects of his great love—the American West. His paintings are an accurate representation of cowboy and Indian life on the plains.

It was largely after the artist’s death in 2010—when his family opened his estate to the fine art world—that Chiriacka began to receive widespread attention for his depictions of western life. His style, in particular, set him apart from many other western painters and recently has piqued interest by art collectors.

Author David Saunders, who interviewed Chiriacka in 2010, described Chiriacka’s work as  "…a handsome style of abbreviated realism to create convincing illusions…this style was perfected by John Singer Sargent, who premixed each stroke from his infinitely malleable colors of oil paints, while Chiriacka simply used flat colors from jars of tempera paints but he locked those planes into a suggested depth by the bravura of his drawing strength.”

Among the galleries that took early notice of Chiriacka’s remarkable talent were Kennedy Galleries and Grand Central Galleries in New York City, and in Chicago at the Mongerson-Wunderlich. Museums have also shown growing appreciation for Chiriacka’s works. The Phippen Museum of Western Art featured two of his pieces in an exhibit titled Early West Storytellers in 2013.

Sources used: Kennedy Galleries of New York exhibition catalog titled “Ernest Chiriacka, Recent Paintings,” May 15 to June 5, 1979, with an introduction by Gerold M. Wunderlich; and, an article by Shari Morrison published in Western Art & Architecture, April/May 2013.

Note: Chiriacka’s date of birth is variously reported as 1913 and 1920.

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