Fred Grayson Sayre (1879-1939) - The Covered Wagon, Oregon Trail - Serigraph 1923 P3416

Measures 14" x 18"

Born in Medoc, MO on Jan. 9, 1879. Fred Grayson Sayre worked in the lead and zinc mines and manufactured leather goods before settling on an art career. He remained a self-taught artist except for two months with J. Laurie Wallace in Omaha. His first creative job as an artist was as an employee of an engraving company in Houston, TX. Sick with diptheria, he moved to California in 1917.

Traveling by train, he was enchanted with the Southwest desert and vowed to return, which he did in 1919. For three years he worked in Arizona as a bookkeeper for a mining company while painting in his leisure. Upon returning to California in 1922, he soon built a home and studio in Glendale where he remained until his death on Jan. 1, 1939 (the same day that Frank Tenney Johnson died in Pasadena).

Sayre is one of California's best-known painters of the desert.