Roy Andersen

Roy Andersen was born in 1930. Published sources disagree on where: auction-market references (Heritage Auctions, Box Dioramas) give Temple, New Hampshire, while a Southwest Art profile and a Kerrville, Texas funeral home obituary give Chicago, Illinois. Several accounts describe his family moving from rural New Hampshire to Chicago while he was young, which may account for the discrepancy, but the record has not been reconciled to a single documented birthplace.

He studied art formally for a short period, about two years at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and about one semester at the Art Center School of Los Angeles, without completing a degree at either. As a young man in Chicago he also took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago and sketched extensively from the Native American displays at the Field Museum of Natural History. He built an early career as a commercial illustrator, with work appearing in National Geographic, Time, and Sports Illustrated, before shifting his focus to Western fine-art painting.

Andersen was elected to the Cowboy Artists of America in 1989 and went on to win the group's Gold Medal for Oil in 1990, for We Hunt Them, and its Silver Medal for Oil in 1991, for The Silent Blanket, with further silver awards in 1999 and 2000. He was invited to participate in the Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City for 19 consecutive years, according to a 2008 Southwest Art profile. Over his career he was represented by Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale and Jackson, Settlers West Galleries in Tucson, and Claggett/Rey Gallery in Vail, relationships that in some cases lasted two decades; InSight Gallery in Fredericksburg, Texas, has continued to list his work. He lived in Kerrville, Texas, in his later years. A Kerrville, Texas funeral home obituary lists a death date of April 25, 2019 for a Roy Andersen consistent with this artist's known biography, though it has not been confirmed with certainty that the obituary refers to the same individual. The year of death, 2019, is independently corroborated by Heritage Auctions, Artnet, and Claggett/Rey Gallery.

Andersen's reputation was built primarily within the Western art community rather than the broader contemporary art press, and the recurring theme in that coverage is ethnographic precision. A biography published by Claggett/Rey Gallery, attributed to Bill Dickerson, emphasizes his care in pairing tribal dress, weapons, and material culture correctly to each nation depicted, and praises his compositional sense and strength of drawing. His standing among peers is documented most clearly through his admission to the Cowboy Artists of America in 1989, his medals at the group's annual exhibitions in 1990 and 1991, and his long run of invitations to the Prix de West exhibition, rather than through coverage in general art criticism.

Andersen's market is thin and specialized, built almost entirely on Western and Native American art sales rather than the broader contemporary auction circuit. His documented auction high is USD 145,600 for Day of the Dog Soldier, sold September 15, 2000; Heritage Auctions' own value guide describes this as the most ever paid for a painting by the artist at auction but does not name the selling house for that particular sale. Heritage's own house record for the artist is lower, USD 34,057.50 for The Trace Leads South, sold November 20, 2010. Other documented results include USD 104,500 for Where the Sacred Bird Leads and USD 85,250 for Bartering for the Spanish, both sold at Coeur d'Alene Art Auction with exact sale dates not published, underscoring a market where individual results depend heavily on the specific work and venue.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Roy Andersen, and no formal estate representation has been documented as of 2026; the galleries that placed his work during his lifetime, Legacy Gallery, Settlers West Galleries, and Claggett/Rey Gallery, along with InSight Gallery, remain the most relevant point of reference for provenance. His auction record is thin, with a wide gap between his documented high and most other public results, so collectors should treat any single sale as a data point rather than a trend line. Even basic biographical facts, including his birthplace and the precise date of his death, are inconsistently documented across otherwise reputable sources, which is a useful reminder to verify provenance and paperwork directly with the galleries that represented him rather than relying on any single reference.