illustrator and painter of the pioneer west

News has before called attention to the bright prospects of a Kingsbury County boy who is a long way up the ladder of fame, and hose start is due entirely to his own exertions and his inherited ability in the line he chose. We refer to Harvey T. Dunn, son of Mr. and Mrs. Thos. Dunn who formerly lived on a farm south of Manchester. When attending country school Harvey took up drawing, and many hours that the teacher thought ought to be devoted to study were "wasted" with a pencil and pad drawing sketches. Harvey was not yet twenty when he went to Chicago to attend a drawing school and so rapidly did he advance in his studies that he more than paid his own way by selling the product of his pencil. The noted Howard Pyle of Wilmington, Dela., offered a scholarship to each of five schools of the country and young Dunn was successful in winning this from his school. He took a thorough course in the school and now at the age of 23 he is at work and not only making a name for himself but earning "all kinds of money." Harvey is engaged in illustrating for papers and magazines, one of which is the Saturday Evening Post. The illustrations in "Where Life is Marked Down" in the June 2 Post and also "Getting that Home" in the issue of July 7, are his and are characteristic of a boy who has seen the west and come in contact with laboring people and the frontiersman. Besides his short story contracts the young man has been engaged to illustrate two novels. Harvey is a nephew of Mrs. C.S.G. Fuller and Nate Dow. -- De Smet Leader, September 14, 1906

Nate Dow was Laura Ingalls Wilder's brother-in-law; he had married Grace Ingalls in 1901. A definitive biography of Harvey Dunn will be released this June: Walt Reed's Harvey Dunn: Illustrator and Painter of the Pioneer West (Flesk Publications). Any news about Harvey Dunn is newsworthy in Kingsbury County, South Dakota, where he was born. Harvey Dunn's parents, Bersha and Thomas Dunn, had arrived on the second train into De Smet after the Hard Winter of 1880-1881. Thomas had filed on the claim shortly after the October blizzard but wisely went back home to Wisconsin for the winter.

The Dunns homestead the SE 17-110-57, south of Manchester and just west of the Bouchie school district. Nate Dow homesteaded the quarter section to the north. Today, the Dunn homestead is an undisturbed grassland protected by a U.S. Fish and Wildlife easement. There's not a road to the quarter section, which keeps the land even more undisturbed.

The South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings collects, preserves, and exhibits visual art to increase access to art and appreciation of art for the people of South Dakota. The Museum houses a permanent collection of Harvey Dunn's work and has teamed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in support of the Harvey Dunn Grassland Preservation Project. Your purchase of a framed copy of Dunn's "The Prairie Trail" will protect one acre of grassland in South Dakota. CLICK HERE to purchase this or other Harvey Dunn prints.

The one-room schoolhouse Harvey Dunn attended as a child has been moved to the grounds of the Depot Museum in De Smet and is open June, July, and August of each year. In recent years, De Smet organized a Harvey Dunn Memorial Society; its purpose is to commemorate the artist and to promote the arts as a new tourism venue in De Smet. This seems to be an association that is supported by contributions rather than memberships at the current time.

In 2009, the Harvey Dunn Memorial Society released a special edition print of Dunn's painting titled "Masters' Homestead," which can be purchased for $100 at The Ingalls Homestead. Of interest to "Little House on the Prairie" fans, the scene was painted and given to De Smet newspaper editor Aubrey Sherwood in the 1940s. It shows the farm of Samuel Masters, father of Genevieve Masters; Gennis was one of the girls who inspired the Nellie Oleson character in the "Little House" books.

If you've seen the photographs taken of the Ingallses' homestead in the 1940s by "Little House" book illustrator Garth Williams, you'll notice that Masters' house is eerily similar in appearance to the one standing on the Ingalls homestead at the same time. That's not Dunn's painting of the Masters' Homestead above; you'll have to buy that one (or the much cheaper notecards containing the same image) to see it for yourself. That's his parents' homestead in Kingsbury County and the sod house he grew up in.
- posted by pioneergirl at 5:11 PM