A born Coloradan, Arthur Roy Mitchell grew up with two dreams – being an artist, and being a cowboy. Throughout adolescence, he bounced back and forth between the two, until in 1917 he felt the need to do something more, and joined the army.
In 1925, and with some encouragement from California artist Harold Von Schmidt, Mitchell sold every valuable object he owned and hopped on a train heading east to New York City’s Grand Central Art School. There, Von Schmidt and Mitchell studied under master painter/illustrator Harvey Dunn, as well as learned a thing or two about life in the big city. Appreciating each others’ true western backgrounds, the three men became quick friends and when Mitchell would head home to the mountains to paint for the summers, Dunn and Von Schmidt would often accompany.
By the time he left the school in 1927, it was difficult for other western artists to compete with his genuine cowboy knowledge and accuracy, and from the late 1920’s through the 1940’s, Mitchell found much success painting covers for magazines such as Northwest Stories, Cowboy Stories, and The American Legion. Often in those days, you could find Mitchell, Dunn, Von Schmidt, and other friends Nick Eggenhoffer and Robert Lougheed in each others’ company on the newsstands, but none other than Mitchell himself would become known as the “King of Western Pulp”.
After tiring of the east coast and its dense population, Mitchell moved back to his sister’s Colorado ranch in 1944. Here, he would eventually take on a teaching position at Trinidad State Junior College, where he would share his passion for art and western culture until 1958.
An avid historian up until the end of his life, the artist’s legacy lives on at the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art in Trinidad, Colorado.
1889 – 1977