Later Years
In between commissions Proctor frequently returned to the West for rejuvenation and inspiration, seeking out members of various Native American tribes to pose for his works.
On a hunting trip to Alaska in 1947 Proctor shot a bear, seventy years to the day after which he had bagged his first one.
Proctor died in Palo Alto, California, where he was living with his daughter, just a few days before his ninetieth birthday.
A sculptor of the "old school," Proctor resisted even the vestiges of modernism that many of his contemporaries adopted. Examples of his legacy are scattered from coast to coast throughout America. As one of the witnesses of the death of the old America (many other artists saw only the birth of the new one) Proctor’s works showing the animals and peoples of frontier America remain popular and as vital today as when he produced them.
Read more about this topic: Alexander Phimister Proctor
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 23:10,11.
“Who lives longer: the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or the man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes till ninety-five? One passes his twenty-four months in eternity. All the years of the beef-eater are lived only in time.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)