Current Exhibition

C. S. Price: A Portrait

June 14 – August 30, 2025

Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery

C. S. Price (American, 1874-1950), Untitled (Coyotes Chasing Buffalo), c. 1905, watercolor on paper, 7 5/8 x 10 1/4 inches, collection of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, Salem, Oregon, Gift of Frances Price Cook, 2006.005.004. Photo credit: Dale Peterson.

The Hallie Ford Museum of Art is pleased to announce a new exhibition, C.S. Price: A Portrait, a major forty-plus-year retrospective exhibition for this important early Portland Modernist painter (1874–1950) who would emerge in the 1930s and ‘40s as a national figure and one of Oregon’s most important and influential artists. The exhibition opens on June 14 and continues through August 30, 2025, in the Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery and is the first major Price exhibition in a quarter century.

Beginning his career as a homesteader, farmer, and rancher in Wyoming and Alberta and as a Western illustrator in Portland, Price would move to Monterey, California in about 1920, where he lived among like-minded artists and fell under the influence of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and Expressionism. In 1929 he moved back to Portland, and during the next two decades he would emerge as Oregon’s foremost Modernist painter—influencing the likes of Charles Heaney (1897-1981), Amanda Snyder (1894-1980), and others—and developing a national reputation as an artist who would help shape America’s view of the West.

Organized by C. S. Price scholar Roger Saydack, the exhibition will feature forty-eight works on loan from public and private collections throughout the United States, including a number of works from the Hallie Ford Museum of Art. In addition to the objects on display, the exhibition will be accompanied by a text panel; chat panels; annotated labels; a wide range of ephemera including old photographs, magazine illustrations, carved animal models, the artist’s palette, and his worktable; and a 312-page, full color book that chronicles Price’s life and career and places his work within the broader context of twentieth-century American and Pacific Northwest art. The book’s retail price is $60.

Exhibition Related Events

To broaden the scope of the exhibition, a lecture and three gallery talks have been planned. On Saturday, June 21, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Paulus Lecture Hall in the Willamette University College of Law, Roger Saydack will deliver an illustrated lecture on Price’s career, from his beginnings as a Western illustrator in the 1910s to his emergence as a nationally recognized painter in the 1940s. Additionally, Saydack will give three Tuesday gallery talks during the run of the exhibition: on June 17, July 8, and August 12 beginning at 12:30 p.m. in the Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery. Admission to the lecture and gallery talks is free.

Roger Saydack is a retired Eugene, Oregon, attorney, professor, and collector who has maintained a lifelong interest in the visual arts. He holds a BA degree from Oakland University in philosophy and studio art, and a JD degree from the University of Oregon, where he specialized in business law. Over the years, he has curated exhibitions and written articles on the Oregon artists David McCosh, Anne Kutka McCosh, Nelson Sandgren, and C. S. Price, among others. C. S. Price: A Portrait is the culmination of Saydack’s fifty-year study of the artist.

Financial Support

Further information

For further information contact:

John Olbrantz, the Maribeth Collins Director, Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Phone: 503-370-6854
Email: jolbrant@willamette.edu

Vanessa Hopt, Assistant to the Director, Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Phone: 503-370-6856
Email: vjhopt@willamette.edu