Joseph E. Yoakum

1890–1972, American

Tags: Drawing

Wide travels and scenes from National Geographic magazine inspired Joseph E. Yoakum’s landscapes of sinuous mountains and clouds, cavernous valleys engulfing neat rows of trees, and perfectly rounded suns.

Yoakum’s mother was French American, and his father was of Cherokee and African American descent. He was born in Ash Grove, Missouri. He began grooming horses for the Great Wallace Circus in 1900 and worked for several others between 1901 and 1908, including Ringling Brothers and Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, which toured Europe from 1903 to 1906.

Yoakum returned to Ash Grove in 1908 and married two years later. He and his wife moved to her hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1915. Yoakum was drafted in 1918 and served in France during World War I. When he returned to the United States after the war, he divorced his wife. Taking various jobs, including working on the railroad and as a seaman, he traveled throughout North America, Australia, and parts of Asia. He saw much of Canada as a hobo. Upon settling in Chicago in the late 1920s, he remarried and worked variously as a carpenter, mechanic, foundry worker, and janitor. He retired in the 1950s and received a veteran’s pension.