Dale Nichols --- Artist 



Another Farm Boy Makes Good in the Difficult Field of Painting 



Y I ,OU may think it a far cry from 

 ^vJ_/ pitching hay and plowing com 

 ^ly on a Nebraska farm to doing oil 

 paintings at $750 or more each. But 

 such is the romantic story of Dale Nichols, 

 fast-rising young Chicago artist who drew 

 the illustrations for the new 1937 lAA- 

 Farm Bureau calendars. A little knowl- 

 edge of this artist and his work may 

 result in a greater appreciation of the 

 new 1937 calendar. 



Dale Nichols was born on his father's 

 160 acre grain and livestock farm near 

 David City in Butler county, Nebraska, 

 July 13, 1904. David City is about 65 

 miles due west of Omaha. Dale had the 

 usual life of a lad who grows up on the 

 farm helping with the chores, taking a 

 man's place in the field when he was 

 old enough to drive a team, herding the 

 Shorthorn and Hereford cattle and at- 

 tending the district school. 



Dale says his mother first noticed that 

 he had a knack for drawing things when 

 he was four years old. He didn't work 

 at it much. There wasn't time on the 

 farm. But he did manage to do some 

 drawings that his teachers thought were 

 good while in school. He won a prize, 

 a blue ribbon, on one of his drawings 

 exhibited at the county fair. His desire 

 to draw had been fixed in his mind quite 

 firmly when at 19 he came to Chicago 

 and attended the Academy of Fine Arts. 



"I got a job with a calendar concern 

 making layouts for calendars," he said, 

 "to help earn my way. My stuff was 

 pretty bad," Dale laughed. "But the 

 company I worked for was patient, they 

 stuck with me. I kept on going to art 

 school — to the Art Institute. My work 

 gradually improved." 



A year ago last spring William Ran- 

 dolph Hearst offered $300 as a first prize 

 for the best painting by a middle west 

 artist. Several thousand entries were 

 made in the contest by artists from this 

 part of the Middle West. 



Dale Nichols who loved to draw the 

 kind of pictures he knew most about 

 — farm scenes — decided to enter the 

 contest. Back at his farm home in Ne- 

 braska he had made many sketches. One 

 of these he carefully finished in oils — 

 a typical winter scene of a farmstead 

 with snow pilled high on and around 

 the buildings. In the foreground a farm 

 boy trudges homeward tracking his way 

 through the snow as he proudly holds 

 up a rabbit for the family's admiration. 

 , This picture, "The End of the Hunt" 

 brought recognition and a measure of 

 fame to its author. Dale entered it in 



DALE NICHOLS 

 "H!s 'End of the Hunt' won tha prize." 



the prize contest in Chicago a year ago 

 last spring. When the committee of 

 judges culled the several thousand entries 

 down to 300 for the show in Chicago's 

 famous Art Institute, Nichols' picture 

 was very much in the running. And 

 when the lightning struck and his pic- 

 ture was chosen first among all the others, 

 no one was more surprised than Dale 

 himself. 



Grant Wood, the renowned Iowa 

 artist noted for his arcuracy and detail in 

 portraying farm life in his rich oil paint- 

 ings was one of the three judges. 



"The End of the Hunt" was exhibited 

 last summer and fall at the Texas "Centen- 

 nial Exhibition in Dallas. It is now on 

 exhibition at Grinnell College in Iowa. 

 The picture was reproduced in full color 

 some time ago in the Chicago Tribune. 

 Also in the London Studio, an English 

 magazine of art. News Week and other 

 magazines have published it. You will 

 see it next month on the cover page of 

 the RECORD. 



Since last April Dale Nichols has sold 

 eight oil paintings at prices ranging from 

 $500 to $1,000 each. "The End of the 

 Hunt " is being held for $2,000. 



Mr. Nichols more recently entered a 

 picture, "While the Sun Shines," a hay- 

 making scene in the "Exhibition of Amer- 

 ican Artists." Out of some 1300 sub- 

 mitted from Chicago and the middle west 

 and 500 from New York and the east 

 the Nichols picture still remained after 

 the lot was culled down to 120. It was 

 .among 45 that went recently to the San 

 Francisco exhibit. 



"All the success I have had in art I 

 owe to my farm background," he said. 

 "I have a deep conviction that farm life 

 is the closest thing to a normal life. 

 I hope to devote more time to revealing 

 farm life as I know it in pictures." Dale 

 is looking for a farm in the Chicago area 

 where he can live and work in the midst 

 of the scenes he loves to put on canvas. 



Nichols' maternal grandfather mi- 

 grated to this country from Germany 

 about 1850. He was an engineer and 

 worked mostly ■ on marine engines. He 

 enlisted in the cavalry in the Union army 

 from Indiana at the beginning of the 

 Civil War. After being mustered out 

 he travelled in a covered wagon with 

 his family to David City, Nebraska. 

 There successively the family lived in a 

 dugout, sod house, and later a log house 

 which still stands on the farm where 

 Dale was born. His father's people and 

 most of his relatives are farmers. None 

 so far as he knows had any inclination 

 toward art, although one of his two 

 brothers, a mechanic, is clever at molding 

 objects such as farm aiiimals from metals. 



For several years Dale Nichols has 

 been making the layouts and art work for 

 the Farmers Mutual Reinsurance adver- 

 tisements published each month in the 

 lAA Record. He did his first work for 

 the RECORD eight years ago — a num- 

 ber of decorative illustrations of lAA 

 services. He also drew the cover page 

 and illustrations in the beautiful blue, 

 black and silver booklet published re- 

 cently by Country Life Insurance Com- 

 pany commemorating its achievement in 

 writing $100,000,000 of life insurance. 



JANUARY. 1937 



