Edward Borein - Important Early Western Artist from California

Edward Borein was born 1872 in San Leandro, CA son of a deputy sheriff, and was one of the few Western painters actually born in the west.

At age five, Edward Borein sketched his first piece, two horses pulling an ornamented hearse. Borein knew his way around a horse and at 18 bought a horse and a bedroll and rode down to a ranch near San Jose to work as a cowboy.

Borein ended back in Oakland after one year of cowboying. His mother, upon seeing the quality of the sketches he had done while cow-punching, enrolled him at the California School of Design where he dropped out after only a month. At art school he met Jimmy Swinnerton and life long friend, Maynard Dixon, who were enthusiastic in advising Edward Borein to continue his art on his own.

Borein once again tied cowboying, this time to the 45,000 acre Rancho Jesus Maria, where he found the work grueling beyond his previous experience. While at the ranch, Edward Borein sent two drawings to Charles Lummis, publisher of the Land of Sunshine, who bought them both for $15.
After Rancho Jesus Maria, Edward Borein headed to Mexico, where he learned Spanish and sketched the local lifestyle and landscape while working as a Vaquero on a series of large ranches. Crossing the border back into the United States, Edward Borein came in contact for the first time with Navajo, Hopi, Zuni and Pima Indian Tribes.

In 1900 Edward Borein took an illustrating job at the San Francisco Call and In 1901 he and Mayanrd Dixon, also a California born artist, began May 6th on a 1000 mile horseback trip from Oakland California to the wilds of Idaho sketching cowboys punching horses.

In 1903 Borein went to Phoebe Hearst's ranch in New Mexico and visited El Paso, Laguna, Acoma, Taos, Oraibi and Walpi. The sketches Edward Borein made during this period would be drawn upon numerous time later for etchings. His ink drawings appeared in Harpers, Colliers Weekly, Sunset Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and in ads for Stetson Hats, Pierce Arrow and Aunt Jemima.

Edward Borein's burgeoning success convinced him to move to New York City in 1907 the same time Maynard Dixon moved there, where he would work for twelve years as an artist and illustrator. Edward Borein became friends with Will Rogers and his idol, Charlie Russell, and met many of the major figures in western art and entertainment.

Russell was impressed by Borein's work and told him that he could be the best oil painter of any western artist with continued practice. Taking this as a thinly-veiled criticism, Edward Borein ceased painting oils for a time and would concentrate on watercolors for the rest of his career.

In 1921, tired of New York city, Borein moved back to California, where he married Lucille at Charles Lummis’s house under his favorite sycamore tree, similar to what Dixon had in 1905 and then settled in Santa Barbara, where Edward Borein became a member of the Santa Barbara Art Club.

Borein is known for his bucking cowboys and detailed etchings, saying once "I will leave only an accurate picture of the West, nothing else but that. If anything isn't authentic or just right, I won't put it in any of my work."