Orville Ewing -- Artist From The Old West

 

Orville Ewing billed himself as an "artist from the Old West". He traveled the United States with his covered wagon/trailer and menagerie for about 30 years starting in 1938. He sold many different postcards of himself over the years. These are from the 1950s. I have five different postcards of him, and I know there are a lot more. The text on the front of the first card was used on many of his postcards, and there seems to be very little other information about him available.

Have traveled from the Atlantic to Pacific Coasts and from Canada to Mexico — at San Francisco World's Fair in 1939, and at the New York World's Fair in 1940. — I gave up oil painting becasus the paint affected my health, and started pencil sketching in 1938.

The first two postcards were published by Curt Teich in 1954 and 1955 (Curt Teich  printed date codes on their postcards). The third postcard states on the back that the photograph on the card shows Mr. Ewing at the time he visited Jacksonville, Florida, in 1957.

I found one newspaper article about Orville Ewing online. It was written in 1977 by someone who had seen Ewing in 1938. At first Ewing was using oxen to pull his wagon. His early menagerie consisted of  two dogs, several goats, a cat, a rooster, and a hen. Later photos on postcards show donkeys pulling the wagon, and usually have at least one goat and a dog visible.

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I have been busy this week designing some new T-shirts for my Postcardy Zazzle Store and have moved my Zazzle blog panel to the top of the left column. I was surprised to see that my store also shows up on the Zazzle UK website. Check it out!