Harold "Buck" Weaver (1889-1961) Biography

Buck Weaver was born in England and, as a youth, worked as a jockey and then as a sailor. It probably was through this latter endeavor that he ended up in California. There he worked as a cowboy, teamster, deputy sheriff, and rodeo cowboy. According to a family story, Weaver was seriously injured in a rodeo accident sometime around the year 1920 and took up painting as part of his recovery.

Weaver maintained his home and studio in San Francisco where he met Maynard Dixon who became a lifelong friend and mentor. He also worked with Edgar Payne in Laguna Beach where he learned to make picture frames. Weaver mostly painted landscapes and spent time in the Sierra Nevada and the deserts of Arizona and Utah. In 1946 he (along with Edith Hamlin and Ray Strong) assisted Maynard Dixon in the execution of Dixon’s final mural, commissioned for the Los Angeles ticket office of the Santa Fe Railway.