To the Men in the Ten-Gallon Hats

Hopalong Cassidy, known as "the epitome of gallantry and fair play," rode onto the television screen this day in 1949.

Based on sixty-six movie features, the popular TV series starred William Boyd in the title role of "sworn enemy of crime and cruelty." Printmaker Mable Dwight captures the spirit of the cowboy genre in her lithograph Stick 'em Up (Cinema).

Whatever activity the people in her lithographs are engaged in, they reflect the artist's mastery of the human comedy. Paying homage several decades ago to Dwight's work, print specialist Carl Zigrosser wrote: "She has the rare faculty of creating types, or portraying figures with individual traits and universal application. Her drawing is not clever or flashy; it is unobtrusive in its completeness. Her figures are solid, carefully built up, psychological as well as physical. Each is a portrait and a personality."

Source: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).

Pictured: Mabel Dwight, 1876–1955, Stick 'em Up (Cinema), 1928, lithograph, 10 3/8 x 10 5/16 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation, Inc. and museum purchase.