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May 26, 2025: Robert Lougheed
Howdy folks, it’s the last week of May 2025, and welcome to This Week in The West.
I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
On this podcast, we share stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West—and those still shaping it today.
There’s a well-worn story from Robert Lougheed’s days painting at the Bell Ranch in New Mexico. The details may have faded with time, but as the legend goes, Lougheed was taking in the sweeping landscape, brush in hand, preparing to capture another Western scene, when a group of cowboys rode past.
They spied Lougheed — who spent a few weeks at the ranch each fall for over two decades — and called out, ‘You sure you’re not a cowboy, Bob? You’re out here more than we are.’”
Today, we remember Lougheed, a giant of Western art and one of the forefathers of our annual Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition, on the anniversary of his birth, May 27, 1910.
Born in 1910, Lougheed grew up on a farm in Ontario, Canada, where he developed an early appreciation of animals and nature. As a young man, he took to sketching the land around him and soon found work as an illustrator in Toronto.
At 25, Lougheed left Canada for New York City to study at the Art Students League. While there, he found himself among a group of fellow illustrators—John Clymer and Tom Lovell among them—who would go on to help define mid-century American visual culture.
Their collective work appeared in the pages of National Geographic, Reader’s Digest, Sports Afield, and The Saturday Evening Post.
Lougheed always had fine art but worked for more than 30 years as a commercial illustrator. The deal he made for himself – six months of commercial work and six months of fine art work. During his “day job,” he made an impact with creations such as the iconic red Pegasus logo for Mobil Oil, while his creative pursuits took him West.
He was captivated by the raw beauty of the terrain, the resilience of its people, and above all, its animals—especially horses.
Lougheed once said, “I always use nature as my model. If I should paint a horse from memory, it would be a Bob Lougheed horse and not a real horse. All the horses, in fact, all the animals in my paintings, are real. To the young, unspoiled artist, I would say … learn to draw and paint from life. Don’t get trapped by photography.”
In 1970, the U.S. Postal Service commissioned Lougheed to design the six-cent buffalo stamp for its Wildlife Conservation Series.
In 1973, Lougheed worked with our museum to create the National Academy of Western Art and build an invitational exhibition around it.
That first show featured 34 artists displaying 92 works of art, according to Bobby Weaver’s written history of our museum. The first show and seminars were sellouts, drawing more than 500 Western art collectors.
The show has evolved into our Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale. This year’s exhibition opens on June 6, with more than 250 pieces of art from painters and sculptors from around the nation. The weekend of art sales happens June 20-21.
The Robert Lougheed Memorial Award is given each year to the artist bringing the best collection of work as voted on by the exhibiting artists.
We have work by Lougheed in our permanent collection here at The Cowboy.
In 1970, Lougheed and his wife settled in Santa Fe, but he continued to make regular trips around the country. For several years, he would gather annually with established and up-and-coming artists in British Columbia to paint wildlife and landscapes.
Bill Rey, a gallery owner who represents Lougheed’s work, had this to say about the artist: “He was a conduit between several different genres and was at the forefront of a movement among younger artists to paint from life outdoors. At a time when urban adherents of postmodernism and abstract expressionism were arguing that realism, including subjects like wildlife and landscapes, was out of vogue, Lougheed and his contemporaries pushed back. They argued there is nothing more inspiring to viewers than the beauty of nature.”
Robert Lougheed passed away on June 3, 1982, at the age of 72.
And with that, we’ll put down our brushes on another episode of “This Week in The West.”
Our show is produced by Chase Spivey and written by Mike Koehler
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We leave you today with more words from gallery owner Bill Rey on Lougheed:
“With Bob, there were no gimmicks, no smoke and mirrors, nothing to hide. It was all about putting in your time, all about creative truth. There’s such a rich authenticity to his work, in color and idea. That’s why so many artists today have Lougheed in their visual vocabulary.”
Much obliged for listening, and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
