The gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) is a native North American canine known for its grizzled “salt-and-pepper” coat and reddish-orange neck, belly, and tail. Known as “tree foxes,” they are the only North American canid that climbs trees using sharp, hooked claws, often residing in wooded, brushy, and rocky areas of the Midwest.<\/p>\n
Frederick (sometimes spelled Frederic ) Sweney was an illustrator, painter, author and teacher. Born in Pennsylvania, he studied at the Cleveland School of Art. From early in his career, he depicted natural history subjects, winning a prize in an exhibition of bird art at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in 1939. He contributed articles and illustrations to magazines such as Sports Afield, Nature, Outdoors<\/strong> and Outdoors Man<\/strong> and produced the artwork for the Minnesota-based Brown & Bigelow publishing company\u2019s wildlife calendars for 10 years. By 1956 he was a professor at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida. Sweney wrote several instructional art books: Technique of Painting and Drawing Wildlife<\/strong> (1959), Painting the American Scene in Watercolor<\/strong> (1964), The<\/strong> Art of Painting Animals: A Beginning Artist’s Guide to the Portrayal of Domestic Animals, Wildlife and Birds<\/strong> (1983) and Cityscape: The Art of Painting the Urban Environment <\/strong>(1985).<\/p>\n Reference:<\/p>\n Gilbert, Dorothy B., ed. Who\u2019s Who in American Art.<\/em> New York: American Federation of Arts and R.R. Bowker, 1959. p. 558.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Frederick Sweney (1912-1996) A gray fox leaps over a fallen tree in a pasture. This painting was previously in the collection of the Brown and Bigelow Gallery of American Art. Sweney produced the artwork for the Brown & Bigelow publishing company\u2019s wildlife calendars for 10 years. According to the title and inscriptions on the back it is titled Gray Fox, painted for the May June 1961 issue of Sportsman\u2019s Gamebag. Indeed, it was the featured artwork, also titled Gray Fox<\/strong>, for an extant May 1961 large-format advertising calendar. On this calendar, two months were grouped together on a single leaf which explains the “May-June inscription on the back of the illustration board. The particular known calendar was custom imprinted for the Sevick Sign Co., Flint Michigan. Presumably other calendars for that year were issued for other companies.<\/p>\n Product description continues below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":9109,"template":"","meta":{"wds_primary_product_brand":0,"wds_primary_product_cat":0,"footnotes":""},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[4222],"product_tag":[2533,1054,10420,10419,10417,10418,4208,776,1757],"class_list":{"0":"post-9107","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-archive-sold-art-design","7":"product_tag-animal","8":"product_tag-art","9":"product_tag-brown-bigelow","10":"product_tag-calendar-art","11":"product_tag-frederick-sweney","12":"product_tag-gray-fox","13":"product_tag-illustration-art","14":"product_tag-michigan","15":"product_tag-painting","16":"post","17":"post-with-thumbnail","18":"post-with-thumbnail-large","20":"first","21":"instock","22":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/9107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/9107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46111,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/9107\/revisions\/46111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=9107"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=9107"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgeglazer.com\/wpmain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=9107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGray Fox<\/strong>
\nAmerican: 1961
\nOil on illustration board
\nSigned lower right
\nTitled verso: Gray Fox, 1961 Sportsman\u2019s Gamebag, by Fred Sweney
\n18 x 23 inches, overall
\n24.5 x 29.5 inches in gold frame
\nProvenance: Estate of William R. Brown, Brown and Bigelow Gallery of American Art, St. Paul, Minnesota; The Lenz Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin<\/p>\n