Trouble at the Creek

Additional Information

Provenance:
Altermann Galleries & Auctioneers, Santa Fe, NM, 2001
Sotheby’s, New York, NY, 2021

The origins of the phrase “predicament painting” are murky, though it surely owes its popularity in Western art to Charles M. Russell’s A Serious Predicament, showing a momma cow turning the tables on a horse and rider. The phrase fits perfectly over Tom Ryan’s No Contest (Trouble at the Creek), which cascades with bad news at every corner: the broken wagon, the fleeing team of horses, the spilled dry goods and the figure dangling on the dead tree. The culprit and catalyst to this dilemma, a massive buffalo, looms large in the picture and he seems unlikely to relent. The predicament continues.

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