A Celebration of Western Movies… Pardner!
Long Hard Ride / Marshall Tucker Band / 1976
After a while Frank was encouraged to go purely to Western Fine Art Painting. He did – and turned out a huge amount of quality work. I’m posting just a few of his images here.
Amazing! You can see the brilliance of his work.
A great Western Artist. 
Heard it in a Love Song / Marshall Tucker Band
Just to get something up on my board I thought I’d post some images of Western Art. Of course, it turned into a mammoth project. But a good one.
There is a lot of great Western Artwork around – and many excellent Western Artists. In fact, if I was to dedicate this blog to Western Art alone, I would have enough material to exhibit on a daily basis for a very looong time.
Among the many exceptional Western Artists was a guy named Frank McCarthy.
Born in New York City, he studied under George Bridgman and Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League of New York then attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
McCarthy began his art career as a commercial illustrator, opening his own studio in 1948. He did illustrations for most of the paperback book publishers, magazines, including Colliers, Argosy, and True, movie companies, and advertisements.
Among McCarthy’s film poster work were The Ten Commandments, The Great Escape, The Train, The Glory Guys, The Dirty Dozen, Dark of the Sun, Day of Anger, Once Upon a Time in the West, and in conjunction with Robert McGinnis Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
McCarthy left the commercial art world in 1968 in order to concentrate on Western paintings. In 1975 he was invited to join the Cowboy Artists of America. His 1972 painting “The Last Crossing” was used by The Marshall Tucker Band in 1976 for the cover of their fifth studio album, Long Hard Ride. He was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1997.
McCarthy died of lung cancer in 2002 at his home of 30 years in Sedona, Arizona.
“All glory is fleeting.”
What could be more Western that Cowboys fighting dinosaurs?
