Robert "Shoofly" Shufelt — "Little Britches" Signed Western Graphite Print, 1979

The pen is quiet for a moment. The calf is down, the rope still taut from the saddle horn, the horse holding steady at the rail. A mounted cowboy coils his lasso with practiced economy. A young girl in embroidered boots and a polka-dot hair net stands watching, hands on hips — old enough to be there, young enough that this is still a spectacle. Two hands work the calf at ground level, one kneeling at the legs. Nobody is looking at the camera. Nobody is performing. This is just Tuesday.

Robert "Shoofly" Shufelt built this scene entirely in graphite — no color, no ink wash, no shortcut — and the result is a demonstration of what pencil can do in the right hands. The weave of a gingham shirt reads as plainly as the stitched inlay on the girl's boot tops. Fringe on a pair of chaps falls with the weight of leather. The horse's coat catches light differently than the rope or the fence rails. Signed in pencil lower right beneath the image and again in the plate with the 1979 copyright, the print was issued as a promotional fine print bearing the imprint "Compliments of Mutual Savings, A Division of First Federal" in the lower margin — a genre of regional fine-art promotion that placed serious work in front of general audiences during the late 1970s.

Robert "Shoofly" Shufelt (b. 1935, Champaign, Illinois) is one of the most accomplished interpreters of cowboy and ranch life working in American art today. Educated at the University of Illinois and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he built an early career as a commercial illustrator before relocating to Arizona in 1976 and later settling in New Mexico — a move that put him among working ranchers and redirected his practice entirely. He did not paint the West from the outside. He moved into it.

Shufelt's medium of choice is graphite, and his command of it is the foundation of his reputation. Working without color, he achieves tonal range and surface differentiation that most artists require paint to accomplish — denim reads differently than hide, rope differently than dust, sunlight on a hat brim differently than shadow in a boot cuff. His works have been exhibited at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and the Desert Caballeros Western Museum, among other institutional venues. His honors include the Great American Cowboy Award (2005), New Mexico Artist of the Year (2007), and the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (2014). "Little Britches," copyright 1979, places this print in his early New Mexico period — the moment when the ranch world he had chosen became the subject that would define his career.

CONDITION

Very Good with no remarkable damage. Paper retains an even cream tone with no major foxing or staining noted. Pencil signature in the lower margin remains crisp. Unframed.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• Sheet: 16" × 20"
• Image (Visible): 14¼" × 15¾"
• Medium: Lithograph on paper
• Signature: Pencil-signed lower right margin; plate-signed and dated © 1979
• Publisher Imprint: Compliments of Mutual Savings, A Division of First Federal
• Unframed