"South Park Cattle Country", 24" x 30", oil on board.	"Shorty at the Mail Box", 24" x 30", oil on board.
"The Summit", 24" x 30", oil on board.	"Horse Play", 24" x 32", oil on board.
"Cow Hands on the Watch", 24" x 30", oil on board.	"Phantom Ranch", 24" x 30", oil on board.

RAPHAEL  LILLYWHITE  (1891-1958)
 

   Raphael Lillywhite is known for his highly collectable, authentic portrayal of traditional Western life. Growing up along the Little Colorado River in Woodruff, Arizona, where his father ran an Indian Trading Post, exposed young Lillywhite to a way of life that would become the driving force behind his paintings.

    Born in 1891, he was one of fifteen children born to Mormon parents and spent most of his childhood roaming the wilds of Arizona and interacting with the Indians, Mexicans and rare white families when they came to trade with his father. He completed his schooling in Arizona and went on the graduate from the University of Utah. From there he pursued his studies in art with Gonzales and Ed Tigera in Sonora, Mexico. Over the next several years, he was fortunate to be able to study with and benefit from many different artists of the time, including the Taos Founders.

   In 1924 he married, Ilka Benko DeSzaak, a Hungarian portrait painter and together they moved to a small cabin along a river in Walden, Colorado. Their marriage suited them both and seemed to be the happiest years of Lillywhite’s life. It was during this time period that Lillywhite painted most of his major paintings. Working in a loose Impressionistic but realistic style; he painted what he had always known, the working cowboy, Indians and horses.

   After nearly twenty years of marriage, Lillywhite’s beloved wife died and the impact of loosing her was something he never truly recovered from. Although he eventually remarried and had a child, his reclusive nature drove him away, spending months at a time visiting sheep camps and traveling to Wyoming and Arizona where he would live with the Indians and paint. This eventually took its toll on his marriage and ended with his wife leaving him. He was known to occasionally take on students and continued with his painting and did some impressive backgrounds for displays at the museum of Natural History in Denver. His last years were lived out alone in Evanston, Wyoming where he died in 1958