Alexander Phimister Proctor

(American, 1862-1950)

Pursuit of the King of the Herd, conceived 1914, cast c. 1917

bronze with brown patina

inscribed A. PHIMISTER PROCTOR SCULPTOR and © 1917 (on the base); also inscribed GORHAM Co. FOUNDERS and stamped GAC (along the base)

height: 18 1/2 in.

Provenance:

Board of Directors, American Tobacco Company, Durham, North Carolina.

A gift from the above.

George Washington Hill, New York.

Sotheby's, New York, Sale of April 25, 1980, Lot 172.

Acquired directly from the above sale.

Wolf Family Collection (no. 0460).

Sotheby's, New York, Sale of April 20, 2023, Lot 314.

Acquired directly from the above.

Private Collection.

Exhibited:

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984-96 (on loan).

Literature:

Patricia J. Broder, Bronzes of the American West, New York, 1974, no. 109, pp. 118, 224, 413, another cast illustrated.

Ace Powell Art Galleries, Inc., Studies in Bronze by A. Phimister Proctor, an exhibition catalogue, Kalispell, 1975, p. 14, another cast illustrated.

Peter H. Hassrick, Wildlife and Western Heroes: Alexander Phimister Proctor, Sculptor, Fort Worth, 2003, pp. 186-89, another cast illustrated.

Lot Note:

Alexander Phimister Proctor solidified his reputation as a premier sculptor of the American West with the creation of Pursuit of the King of the Herd. Ever sensitive to the artistic landscape, he elected to interpret a high-drama buffalo hunt even after contemporaries like Charles Marion Russell had already secured widespread recognition for similar compositions. For the present work, Proctor recruited the noted Nez Perce rider, Jackson Sundown, nephew of Chief Joseph, as his primary model. Sundown was a celebrated public figure, renowned equally for his achievements in the rodeo circuit and for his near-mythic survival tactics while mounted during conflict. Proctor’s journals detail his fruitful collaboration with Sundown and document how his model would ride and maintain demanding poses repeatedly, allowing the sculptor to capture the precise anatomical and human details of the hunt.

The resulting bronze is a tour de force of Proctor's command of form and ability to translate kinetic force into static material. The sculpture commemorates the climactic moment of the chase, where the hunter leans perilously across his mount to pierce the massive, churning bulk of the buffalo. The composition is a study in counterpoint, pitting the sheer weight and wild desperation of the cornered bison against the streamlined thrust and controlled aggression of the hunter and his leaping horse. The figures appear frozen, momentarily suspended above the ground in a high-stakes battle for self-preservation–for both hunter and hunted. Pursuit of the King of the Herd, much more than a depiction of a classic Western trope, embodies a universal narrative of skill, conflict, and survival.

Pursuit of the King of the Herd, conceived 1914, cast c. 1917

Pursuit of the King of the Herd, conceived 1914, cast c. 1917