Rough Rider

Rough Rider
John Lawrence Doyle

Artist Biography
Acquisition Number: 79.39.7
Medium: Lithograph on paper
Size: 29 1/2 x 41 1/2 in.
Date: 1976
Credit: gift of Mr. Ted Luntz

John Lawrence Doyle was known for his lithographs reflecting his fascination with the human condition. For over a decade, Doyle studied ethnology and anthropology. Directly after the end of the Vietnam War, and in anticipation of the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, Doyle created a series of 11 lithographs - "Sharpshooters 76;" which presented soldiers from wars of America’s past in chronological order. “I wanted to do something that people at the time didn’t particularly want to deal with — war. Particularly, coming so close to the end of the Vietnam era. Folks just sort of wanted to forget it. I also wanted to show that the history of this country is a rather bloody affair, a war every twenty years or so. Courageous no doubt, but dehumanizing nonetheless. This dehumanizing process is what I hoped to show through the evolution of the wars, from the somewhat gentlemanly conducted affair of the Revolution to the dehumanized slaughter of Vietnam.”