Bill Anton

From the moment in the early 1960s when Bill Anton first saw the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Montana, he gave his heart and mind over to the expansive Western landscape. Exposed to art and museums early in life, Anton developed a talent for drawing and painting, which was nurtured by contemporary masters Ned Jacob, Jim Reynolds, and Michael Lynch. Anton greatly admires the work of the master of Western painting, Frank Tenney Johnson, and the California Impressionists of the last century, primarily Edgar Payne.

Anton’s work has remained in high demand. He exhibits yearly in several invitational shows, including the Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

In 2022, Anton received the Gene Autry Memorial Award for the most outstanding presentation of three or more works at the Autry’s Masters of the American West and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Desert Caballeros Museum. He has won several other awards at Masters. In 2015, he won the Don B. Huntley Spirit of the West Award for his painting Campers or Cow Thieves? In 2012 his painting Arizona Awakening won the Masters of the American West Purchase Award, and at the 2011 Masters, Anton won both the Spirit of the West Award and the Gene Autry Memorial Award for the best display of three or more works. He also won the Spirit of the West Award at the 2019 and 2010 Masters.

His many awards at the Prix de West Invitational include the Prix de West Purchase Award in 2020 for Makeshift Ambulance, the Frederick Remington Award for Painting in 2016 for Deep in the Wind Rivers, and the Express Ranches Great American Cowboy Award in 2011. At the 2009 Prix de West, he won both the Express Ranches Great American Cowboy Award and the Robert Lougheed Memorial Award for the best display of three or more works.

Anton lives with his family just outside Prescott, Arizona.

Bill Anton is represented by Illume Gallery West, Philipsburg, Montana; Legacy Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona; and Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, Arizona.