Earl W. Bascom

(June 19, 1906 – August 28, 1995) was an American painter, printmaker, rodeo performer and sculptor, raised in Canada, who portrayed his own experiences cowboying and rodeoing across the American and Canadian West.

Childhood


Earl Bascom was born on June 19, 1906 in a sod-roofed log cabin on the Bascom 101 Ranch in Vernal, Utah. His father, John W. Bascom, had been a Uintah County deputy sheriff and a constable in the town of Naples in northeast Utah, who chased members of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch Gang and other outlaws
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Earl's grandfathers,Joel A. Bascom and C.F.B. Lybbert, were Mormon pioneers,[2] ranchers and frontier lawmen. Joel Bascom was a cattle rancher and a member of the Utah Militia fighting in the Utah War of 1857 and the Utah Black Hawk Indian War of 1866. He also served as Chief of Police in Provo, Utah and as constable in Mona, Utah. C.F.B. Lybbert, who served in the Danish army before coming to America, was a rancher and blacksmith who served as constable of Levan, Utah and Justice of the Peace in Naples, Utah.
Bascom's paternal ancestral background was a colorful aray of nationalities and ethnicities including Quaker, French Basque and Huguenot, as well as an American Colonial Governor, John Webster, and a Revolutionary War soldier, Oliver Greene.[3] His maternal family was of Norwegian, Danish, Dutch and German ancestry.[4] As a child growing up, he was sometimes affectionately addressed by his British-born grandmother and aunts as "Lord Bascom - King of the Canadian Cowboys," as he was a descendant of European royalty back to Charlemagne.
In 1912, when Earl Bascom was just six years old, his mother Rachel died, leaving five children ranging in age from 11 years to nine months.