What’s a Woofus worth? Watercolor rendering of Fair Park’s mythical beast could rake in thousands

UPDATED 11:50 am September 30, 2021: This story has been updated with additional details regarding the sale of the work.

A riddle: what is the body of a pig, the head of a sheep, the tail of a turkey, the neck of a horse, the wings of a duck, the chrome-plated long horns of an ox, is eight feet tall and lives in Dallas? The woofus, of course. The mythical beast was created by artist Lawrence Tenney Stevens for the 1936 Texas Centennial as an amalgamation of animals found at the State Fair.

The Pegasus may be the more elegant creature, but if you ask me, the Woofus – not exactly beautiful, its various parts not quite comfortably connected, but with an adorable idiosyncratic character – is the more perfect symbol of Dallas. Its silhouette should be on the city flag.

The original Woofus didn’t go away long after the Centennial Fair, but a facsimile by artist David Newton was reinstalled in the Beast’s rightful place in front of the Livestock Pavilion in Fair Park in the 1990s.

The woofusThe woofus(File 2004)

This reproduction was made using Stevens’ original maquettes – true-to-scale models – on loan from the Lawrence Tenney Stevens Collection, purchased from John Faubion, an Arizona art dealer who was then the neighbor of Bea Stevens, the artist’s widow. was, was managed.

The management of this collection is now disputed between the Stevens family and Faubion, but Faubion is auctioning a valuable work from it nonetheless: a watercolor sketch by Stevens to present George Dahl, the exhibition architect and design director, with a suggested color scheme for the crushed mammal. The idea that was discarded was that the sculpture should be polychrome, and the study shows the woofus with a blue tail, pink body, red and yellow striped sash, and white neck and face covered in small blue dots is .

What is a woofus worth? Inestimable, obviously. But you can get the animal’s watercolor now available on eBay with a minimum opening bid of $ 15,000 (plus $ 23.60 for expedited shipping).

It’s a high price to pay, but how can you value history?

A gold leaf Tejas Warrior statue is paired with original blue tiles in front of the historic Hall of State building in Fair Park, Dallas on March 1, 2019.  The building, originally constructed in the lead up to the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936, will soon begin restoration.  (Ashley Landis / The Dallas Morning News)A Pegasus statue by Don and Barbara Daseke in their Dallas home on July 11, 2018.

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