Loops and Swift Horses are Surer Than Lead, by Charles Marion Russell (1916)

Here is a wonderful action painting by our friend, Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), the Cowboy Artist.  Charlie is a good saddle pal to us here at The Jade Sphinx, and Your Correspondent has been trying to get a sense of the man and his philosophy through his pictures. 

We can start with the obvious: the title of this work, Loops and Swift Horses are Surer Than Lead.  In the survey of Western Art we have done here over the years, we have had occasion to look at several pictures that include bears in an attitude of menace.  In fact, after Native Americans, bandits and over-zealous lawmen, perhaps the bear is the most frequently represented foeman in Western Art.

However, most any of Charlie’s contemporaries would take the obvious route, and paint a picture of Western figures shooting and killing the bear.  (Or, reaching for their rifles to do so, or putting them down after they have done so.)  Not Charlie.  His cowboy heroes, though obviously well-armed, rope and scare the bear away to safer climes.  Always more Roy Rogers than Clint Eastwood, Charlie didn’t see the West as a vast panorama of hardship and cruelty, but, rather, a boyish paradise of freedom and fun.

This is where Charlie differs most significantly from the artist frequently associated with him, Frederic Remington (1861-1909).  For Remington, the West was unending hardship, merciless desert and physical exertion, a battle for survival to be won or lost.  It is Remington, of course, who created in his work the now-familiar Western trope of the bleached steer skull that can still be seen in countless depictions of the West.  Make a wrong move, Remington implied, and you’ll end up the same.

If this picture is any indication, perhaps Charlie’s vision was the truer one.  Loops and Swift Horses now hangs in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and is based on a true-life incident.  This painting came about by way of his friends, the Coburn brothers of the famous Circle C Ranch in eastern Montana, where they described the roping of a giant brown bear. Artistic license was taken when Charlie turned the bruin into a Grizzly, but the rest of the story was true right down to the landscape in the background: the scenic Coburn Buttes.

The dominant color of the picture is blue, but Charlie manages to mute or pop shades of it to represent everything from trees to sky to mountains, to foreground scrub.  Yes, the color never becomes monotonous or gimmicky. 

Charlie was also the master of figures in motion.  His horses move.  Many of our greatest artists have been able to depict horses of majesty, of size, of monumentality, but Charlie’s horses are seen in dramatic action, twisting or jumping with a febrile life of their own.  I can think of no finer painter of American horses than Charlie Russell

Finally, Charlie underscores the tumultuous action of the picture with a rainstorm in the middle-distant horizon.  Like all Western landscape pictures, the view-horizon is vast, going on for miles.  Thus the far-off rain storm underscores the ‘storm’ of action going on between cowboys, horses and bear. 

Speaking of movement, take a moment to look at the bear.  It twists and pivots on unsteady ground … you can almost feel the weight of the animal as it is pulled and slides down the natural incline.  The cowboys, too, move as if in motion, alternately pulling or swinging their lariats.  And notice the cowboy on the right, looking over his right shoulder, with right leg raised as counter weight to keep in saddle.

This is a really good picture, and something mysteriously akin to the essence of Charlie – not only is his West a world of action, freedom and camaraderie, but it can be a fairly bloodless one, too.  Charlie loved the animals he found out West (when visiting cities, he always went to the local zoo, where he said he felt most at home), and it’s not surprising that he would depict his heroes scaring away the threat of a grizzly, rather than killing it. 

Perhaps we should all take a page from Russell’s notebook, and produce work that preserves the best parts of ourselves (or, at least, the myth of the best part of ourselves).  The more I look at Charlie’s work, the more convinced I become that we need more artists like him now.

The Art of Alfredo Rodríguez, Part III: A Golden Moment (2013)

We conclude our look at Alfredo Rodríguez (born 1954) with this, A Golden Moment, painted just one year ago.

Though the last two pictures we looked at were of American Indians, Rodríguez spends nearly as much time painting miners, prospectors and Wild West bad men.  He also paints children of the plains, as well as Mexican and Indian women in a manner that could only be called Sanitized Cheesecake.

Rodríguez is a conundrum – a painter of undeniable skill and talent, but without any taste or point of view.  He too often relies on pyrotechnics to achieve his effects, and short-changes his own considerable abilities.

Today’s picture is certainly not Rodríguez at his best; though correct enough in its component parts, they don’t seem to fit together in any real way.  The prospector is wonderfully drawn, but there is no real sense of his weight or bulk upon the rocks.  The gun in his belt looks more like something drawn on his shirt than a real weapon, and I’m not quite sure where the back of the man’s body is hiding.

More egregious is the dog, who looks like he was stenciled onto the background, like one of those sets we got as children where we rubbed figures into pre-painted pictures.  The poor hound seems to hang there, not really in this picture at all, and obediently looking off to the side to see if its time to get out of it. 

How can this happen?  Again – look at the man, divorced from the rest of the picture.  Or, better yet, look at the pickaxe, bucket and pan.  All are executed with a sure hand; even the dog -- the component of the picture that screams “kitsch” with bruised lungs – is competently done.  It’s just that all of these pieces look like they were stitched together, a painting more Frankenstein than Buffalo Bill.

Alfredo Rodríguez clearly wants to be a modern Charles Marion Russell or Frederic Remington; but his passion is commercial, not personal.

A Pack Train, by Frederic Remington

We close our weeklong look at Frederic Remington (1861-1909) with another of his nocturnes, A Pack Train, painted in 1909 (about 36x27). 

To pick up Remington’s story, his success as a Western painter made him the darling of Western Army officers fighting in the Indian Wars.  He was often travelling with them, usually with General Nelson Miles.  Remington touted the “heroism” of the military after the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, in South Dakota, where 150 Sioux, mostly women and children, were murdered by the U.S. Army. 

Remington continued on his frequent trips around the U.S. and Mexico, painting and writing books and articles on the West.  He wooed many celebrities and politicians – forging an important friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, for instance – but he was never able to break into the entrenched artistic establishment.  Partly this was because of his endless self-publicizing (which, for an interesting comparison, was also one of the problems with Whistler), and partly because he was viewed as a singularly difficult man (which, for an interesting comparison, was also one of the problems with most of the artists covered in The Jade Sphinx).

Remington died in 1909, the day after Christmas, following an emergency appendectomy that led to peritonitis.  It was not helped by the fact that he weighed in the neighborhood of 300 pounds and had lived a very high life.

A Pack Train is another attempt by Remington to paint nighttime scenes.  He does this by using a largely viridian palette, and contrasting larger and darker shades to make up his figures.  There is no crystal-clear delineation of the mules, packs or rider, but the overall impression is unmistakable.  Remington also masterfully captures the quality of shadows cast by moonlight – Remington’s shadows are never black, brown or gray, but shades of blue, green or purple.  He painted with both his brain and his optic nerve.

Two things are going on with this picture.  First off, the sense of how alone this man is.  The landscape around his is enormous and falls back to great distances of emptiness.  However, they sky above, also immense, is filled with stars and other points of light – life also separated by incalculable distances.

Also there is the sense of menace so often found in Remington’s work.  Though there is no clear danger depicted, the wary turn of the cowboy’s head and the sense of isolation and vulnerability in the dark is overwhelming.  Whether delivering supplies or transporting everything he owns personally, no one looking at the pictures wishes he was the driver.  Even the donkeys seem to be beaten down by care or worry.  It’s a remarkably emotional picture executed in a deceptively simple manner.

We Struck Some Boggy Ground, by Frederic Remington

Here is a stunning black and white piece by artist Frederic Remington (1861-1909), depicting an actual event some 40 years after the fact for an article he wrote about it in Harper’s Weekly.  (He did rely upon the testimony of eyewitnesses.)

Remington’s story, How the Law Got Into the Chaparral, was published in December, 1896.  In the story, Remington relates the tale as told by Texas Ranger Colonel “Rip” Ford.  John Salmon “Rip” Ford intermittently led Ranger companies against Indians throughout the 1850s and dealt with Mexican rebellion on the Rio Grande in 1859-60.  His most notable exploit was the Battle of Antelope Hills, May 12, 1858, in which Texas Rangers surprised and destroyed the Comanche village of Iron Jacket.

For a full description of the engagement, here is a passage from Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers, a magisterial history by Robert M. Utley that comes highly recommended: By March 1858, Ford was advancing toward the northwestern frontier, combing a broad swatch of country in four columns.  He felt himself too weak, however, to mount an offensive into the Comanche homeland.  The Rangers called up under the Pease administration had reached the end of their terms and were being replaced.  That left Ford with only a few more than a hundred men, including his seventy-three-year-old father.  At the Brazos Agency, however, Agent Shapley Ross solved Ford’s problem: more than a hundred Caddos, Anadarkos, Tawakonis, and Tonkawas placed themselves under Ross’s command to take the warpath with Ford’s Rangers.

Striking northwest from is base near Fort Belknap, Ford crossed Red River and bore north into the Comanche ranges west of the Wichita Mountains.  The Indian auxiliaries not only doubled Ford’s firepower but proved their worth as guides and trackers.  The Rangers were superior fighters, well drilled by Ford.  All they needed was to find the elusive Comanches, which they achieved by falling on a broad trail that led to the Canadian River opposite the landmark Antelope Hills.

Early on May 12, 1858, the Rangers and their allies splashed across the Canadian and raced headlong toward the village of the Comanche chief Iron Jacket.  The Brazos Indians took the lead, bore to the left, between the village and the river, and poured a deadly fire into surprised warriors bolting from their lodges.  Iron Jacket, brightly painted and armored in a coat of Spanish mail, mounted and charged the Brazos line.  “The sharp crack of five or six rifles brought his horse to the ground,” recalled Ford, “and in a few moments the Chief fell riddled with balls.”  The auxiliaries shot down all the Comanches attacking toward the river.  Meanwhile, in two wings the Rangers stormed into the village itself.  The fight then became a free-for-all, with knots of Rangers and their allies chasing fleeing Comanches.  Here and there warriors paused to make a stand and give their families time to escape.  But the Rangers, their six-shooters pooping, broke up every such attempt.  Shortly after noon, the winded pursuers returned to the village.  Warriors from another camp a few miles up the Canadian attempted a counterattack, but were driven off.

(Watch these pages for a review of Lone Star Justice, along with other books by master historian Robert M. Utley.)

This stunning gouache picture in grisaille measures 29.4x20, and also shows an interesting insight into Remington’s views on Indians.  In his story, Remington writes about the “screaming of the women and the children,” and in his illustration also shows how viciously outnumbered, out-gunned and out maneuvered the Indians were in this encounter.

The Rangers ride magnificent horses and brandish guns – by focusing on the rear of the animals and moving them uphill, Remington underscores their size and power.  The sheer size of the Rangers in the picture is impressive: they dwarf the Indian encampment in the background, which seems to have no martial contingent ready at-hand.

Telling, too, is the dead Indian in the foreground.  His proximity to the horses show the Indians ridden over by the tide of history.  A fascinating bit of Remingtonana.

More Remington tomorrow!

 

Fight for the Water Hole, by Frederic Remington

A copy of this picture hung on my wall when I was Public Affairs Director at Hoffmann-La Roche, which perhaps says more about the shot-‘em-dead working environment of a global pharmaceutical company than any war stories I could share.

Painted in 1903 on canvas (3' 4.13" x 27.13") and currently housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, Fight for the Water Hole is a remarkable picture.   As we said previously, Frederic Remington (1861-1909) thought of the West mostly as a place of peril, privation and as a land where heroes met (or where ploughed under by) these challenges.

To demonstrate how Remington illustrated peril, look closely at what is happening here.  The water hole is really slightly more than a miserable puddle of water – a puddle in the middle of a vast expanse of arid desert.  Five men and their horses are huddled inside, and the men hold their rifles at the ready, for protecting the water hole is their sole hope for survival.  Indians circle in the distance.  And Remington doesn’t seem to hold out much hope for cowboys: in the upper right of the picture is what seems to be one of his trademark cattle skulls, bleached white by the sun.

Remington divides the painting into broad swatches of color, putting the viewer slightly above the action.  This not only gives us a bird’s eye view of the steely-eyed westerner (who looks a bit like actor Sam Elliott), but also provides a view of the purplish mountains in the far distance.  This expanse increases the importance of the waterhole: though it is large in the painting, it is infinitesimal in the scheme of the landscape.

The long shadow on the right side of the hole does not bode well for our heroes – day is clearly waning, making them more vulnerable.  This is especially poignant given the historical moment at which it was painted: in 1903, people were distraught by the closing off of the West.  Here, not only the West but Western heroes are facing an irrecoverable end of their own.  And, in view of the recent Indian Wars, here are heroes of which we will never see the like again.

Fight for the Waterhole was published in 1903 in Collier’s Weekly as part of Remington's four-year contract with the magazine to reproduce one painting each month. This alliance encouraged Remington to experiment with his technique, and as seen here, the results included looser brushwork, refined compositions, a bolder palette, and the development of psychological qualities in his art.  The action is inspired by landscapes such as the Sierra Bonita Ranch in Arizona, and on the Buffalo Wallow Fight in the Texas Panhandle during the Indian Wars.  However, I believe Remington painted this picture while comfortably ensconced in New York.

More Remington tomorrow!

Pretty Mother of the Night, by Frederic Remington

We continue our look at Western artist Frederic Remington (1861-1909) with a picture very different from the frenetic and violent A Dash for the Timber: Pretty Mother of the Night.

Following his first commercial sales to Harper’s Weekly, Remington went to rural Peabody, Kansas, to become a sheep rancher.  He quickly found out the life in Kansas was boring, isolated and rougher than he anticipated.  An Easterner at heart, he was never really completely at home in the wilderness. His inheritance dissipated from the failed venture, Remington returned home.

His mother loaned him enough money to go to Kansas City and start a hardware business.  However, some kind of swindle (the details have never really been clear), made the business fail.  He took what money he had left and invested as half-owner in a saloon.  He also married his New York sweetheart Eva Caten and brought her to Kansas City.

Eva was as unhappy in the saloon business as Remington was in the sheep business.  In addition, she showed little interest or appreciation in his art, and left him to return to New York.  This desertion may have served as something of a wakeup call to Remington, who started to sketch and paint in earnest.

His painting created greater success for him than any of his business ventures, and he soon identified as an artist.  He returned to New York and reunited with Eva in Brooklyn.  He studied at the Art Students League in New York and improved his technique.

At this time, there was a fear in the East that the great open spaces of the West were closing down, and that the pageant of the American West was drawing to a close.  Remington was able to capitalize on that by submitting work to Harper’s Weekly and Collier’s, documenting his recent (and largely exaggerated) Western experiences.  Eastern editors took him for the genuine article, and started sending him back to the West to chronicle its final days.

Between 1885 and 1888 Remington made a number of trips to the American Southwest, principally to cover the U.S. Cavalry and its pursuit of the Apaches. He also followed the Cavalry in pursuit of the renegade Indian Geronimo.  The stark landscape and dramatic human events he encountered there greatly influenced his artistic development. Remington filled his diaries with observations, made countless field sketches, took many photographs with the latest equipment, and collected numerous artifacts to use in his paintings.

In the eternal comparisons between Remington and Charles Russell (1864-1926), one of the most interesting points is their respective feelings toward the American Indian.  Russell genuinely liked Indians – to him, they were just as much a symbol of freedom and living-in-nature as the American cowboy.  He learned the exacting sign language (he and his wife used it as both a private code and a party trick), and even camped with them for extended periods.  Though he never shied from depicting the occasional savagery of the Indian, he also reveled in his beauty, capability and stoicism.

It was an entirely different story with Remington.  Most of his interactions with the Indians were while he was covering the Indian Wars in the company of the U.S. Cavalry.  They were never anything less than the enemy – wily, unscrupulous, untrustworthy and … alien.  There are few positive depictions of the Indians in Remington’s work.  That is why Pretty Mother of the Night (oil on board) is such a remarkable picture.  Seldom has he portrayed the Indian with such a sympathetic eye.

Pretty Mother of the Night is best labeled a nocturne – its explores the technical and aesthetic difficulties of painting nighttime pictures.  (It is a feat at which Remington would excel.)  Painted around 1900, this picture was meant to serve as an illustration for a novel he had recently written called The Way of the Indian.  In the novel the hero, White Otter, addresses the moon (Pretty Mother of the Night) after successfully completing a test of manhood. 

Aside from the lack of the frenetic energy in a painting like A Dash for the Timber, look at the other things that Remington does differently.  A Dash for the Timber details man, horse and landscape with an almost photographic attention to detail.  Here, Remington uses a significant change in compositional technique.  Though beautifully rendered, the horses, Indians and landscape are all done with an almost Impressionist lack of detail. 

Also … Just look at how he poses the subjects and what he’s doing with them.  If the landscape is barren and empty, Remington underscores the hardness of the landscape by the lean, almost skeletal sparseness of the Indians.  These are not well-fed warrior princes, but, rather, people of the land barely squeezing a living from it.

Also, too, look at how he compares the barren immensity of the landscape and its two dots of life with the immensity of the heavens with its corresponding dots of light.  Remington here underscores the quiet miracle of life, both here on earth, and in the heavens.

More Remington tomorrow!

 

 

A Dash for the Timber by Frederic Remington

An email crossed our desk wondering why we at The Jade Sphinx have devoted so much time to so many great painters of the American West, yet have paid scant attention to one who is arguably one of the greatest: Frederic Remington.

There are several reasons for the seeming oversight on our part.  First off, Remington’s works are so well cataloged throughout the Web that it seemed a redundancy on our part.  Secondly, I didn’t know if there was anything I could say that was either fresh or interesting.  And finally, in my researches into the man himself … I have to say that no matter how much I admire his work, I don’t like him very much.

Though Remington had several youthful adventures out West, his conception of the time and place were radically different from that of his contemporary, Charles Russell (1864-1926).  Where Russell saw the West as a glorious pageant, a time of freedom and fun and opportunity, Remington saw only the hardship, the brutality and the privation.  Both outlooks are perfectly viable and have more than an element of truth – indeed, either outlook is possible for today’s world – but I could never fully embrace the negativist. 

Frederic Remington (1861-1909) was, if I may slip into the vernacular of the West, born a dude.  He was born in Canton, New York.  His father, Seth Pierre Remington, was a colonel in the Civil War and a businessman who was often absent from the family.  The family moved from Bloomington, Illinois for a brief time, and later resettled in Ogdensburg, New York.

Young Frederic was something of a challenge to his father.  The boy had no great ambition to work too hard, no interest really in the military, and thought he would spend his life as a journalist-illustrator.  While in military school, Remington spent most of his time drawing pictures – he was clearly not soldier material and the older Remington’s dreams of his son going to West Point were squashed.  Instead, young Remington went to art school at Yale, where he was the only male in attendance.  (He also was something of football star.)  After graduating, he used a small inheritance to go West.

Remington spent time in Montana and New Mexico, watching cattlemen, cavalry and foot soldiers, and Indians.  From this trip, he sold a story and illustration to Harper’s Weekly, and in a very roundabout way, his career as an artist began.

Remington’s first great painting was A Dash for the Timber, and it is easy to see how his reputation as a serious artist started here.  It is his first masterpiece.  The picture was commissioned by E. C. Converse, a wealthy New York industrialist who wanted a painting that portrayed “a life-threatening situation.”  Converse knew of Remington from his work with Harper’s Weekly (by this time, Remington had followed General Cook on the trail of Geronimo, the rebel Apache, to get the story for Harper’s.)  As a journalist out West, Remington, knew it to be a place where hard men managed to live off of a harder, more unforgiving land. 

The painting first appeared publicly at The National Academy of Design in 1889; years later, it was bought by a private individual and donated to Washington University.  In 1945, the university sold it to collector David Findlay Sr. for $23,000 so that they university cold then buy a Picasso and a Matisse.  (They should’ve kept the Remington.)  The picture now resides at the Amon Carter Museum.

Let’s look at this remarkable picture.  The first thing of course that draws our eye are the horses.  Remington’s portrayal of airborne horses was revolutionary in 1889.  He was aided in this not just through personal observation, but through the fast-action sequential photographs of Eadweard Muybridge, who invented a technique for taking such fast photos that he was able to capture the horse while it was actually airborne.

These are horses running hard: each muscle is straining, nostrils are flared, eyes are bulging.  Lariats and canteens are suspended in mid-air under the thundering hoof beats, and a cloud of dust follows in their wake.  Look, too, at the contrast of the purplish shadow thrown by the horses and the stark, sandy-colored earth. 

Each and every one of the participants is a distinct personality: except, of course, for the empty-saddled horse, which has obviously lost its rider.  Look, too, at the rigidity of the vaquero on the left obviously hit by a bullet – one of his comrades leans over the keep in him the saddle.  The hats of the riders fold at the brim in the wind, and some of the hardier souls turn round to return gunfire.

The timber, to the left, looks a little thin, and one wonders how much protection it will provide.  Indeed, these look like doomed men.

Aside from the virtuosity of the composition and execution, what Remington really captures is a sense of action.  Painters from the Renaissance onward have been able to create a sense of movement, but not so much of action.  A Dash for the Timber is the kind of painting that leaves the viewer in a sweat of exhaustion.

More than 100 years of Western films have perhaps removed some of the novelty of this composition, but have not diminished at all its power.  This is a remarkable painting.

More Remington tomorrow!

The Western Art of William R. Leigh Part V

I could not help it … I’ve found so many of the pictures of William R. Leigh so beautiful, I had to continue.  And I also thought that there would be no better way to celebrate July 4^th than by looking at some of Leigh’s gorgeous examples of pure Americana.

Many of the pictures of William Robinson Leigh (1866 –1955) depict landscapes of the American West and various scenes from the lives of her native peoples.  However, it was relatively rare that Leigh painted the cowboys who flooded the West and transformed the land into the country we know today. 

There are few myths more potent than that of the American cowboy.  He is the US equivalent of the knights errant of old, our great national hero, and the exemplar of what all boys wanted (at one time) to be.

Today, the myth of the West has been tarnished for a variety of political reasons, not the least of which is political correctness, which would condemn the cowboy (and the entire Western genre) as sexist, racist, exclusionary, and, who knows, even guilty of halitosis.  Critics who dismiss the West (both in art and literature) seem never to have really read Western novels or looked at Western pictures – they never really have a proper understanding of the genre.  A quick look at the works of Jack Schaefer (1907-1991) or Owen Wister (1860-1938) or Zane Grey (1872-1939) would quickly give lie to the racist/sexist canard, and the aesthete can look at the beautiful pictures of Charles Russell (1864-1926) and Frederic Remington (1861-1909) and many others without a pang of guilt – the pictures are magnificent and the “political” message, if there be any, minimal.

There are other, equally pernicious, nails in the coffin of our great American Western myth.  First is the increased urbanization of the US – fewer and fewer people are living in rural areas, and many young people find it easier to relate to myths involving aliens and other planets than the pioneers who lived a rugged life on the frontier.  Another is our sedentary culture, where the idea of vigorous life (outside of the gym, at least) is met with smiling condescension, and, of course, the influx of peoples from other countries who would much rather forget those heroes who built the land and merely accept it benefits.

But, whatever the reason for the decline of the great Western myth, let’s pause to consider Bucking Bronco with Cowboy, painted by Leigh in 1913.  The picture is 30 x 22, oil on canvas, and currently up for auction at the Jackson Hole Art Auction, set for September 15^th, 2012 at the Center for the Arts, 265 South Cache, Jackson Wyoming.  Along with this magnificent Leigh, works by Russell, Remington and Albert Bierstadt will be on hand.  More information can be found at:  http://jacksonholeartauction.com/

Bucking Bronco is unusual in that it is painted in a more Impressionist manner than Leigh’s other works – the cowboy, though realistically depicted, is painted with broader strokes than is usual for the central figures of many of his pictures.  The horse is magnificently rendered, with a great sense of motion and animation.  Here Leigh’s highly trained grasp of anatomy – both human and animal – are a great boon to the overall realism of the scene.  Too often in Western paintings it’s clear that the artist has never seen a horse; Leigh clearly knows horse anatomy and the best ways of realistically manipulating it.

Leigh uses a heavily loaded brush for his impasto effects of the sky and landscape.  His thick application of paint in this picture is particularly luscious, and his vibrant coloration a mini-July 4^th celebration with every look at the picture. 

As is often the case with Leigh, it is little touches that true devotees savor.  Look at the studs lining the back of the cowboy’s saddle, or the completely realized reins held by the cowboy.  Even the cowboy’s quirt is alive with a peculiar animation.

Bucking Bronco With Cowboy is one of those pictures that makes me happy just looking at it.

More William Leigh tomorrow!

The Western Art of William R. Leigh Part III

We continue with our look at the West of William R. Leigh with The Leader's Downfall, painted in 1946.  This is oil on canvas, 78 x 126, a sizable picture.  It is currently housed in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, in Oklahoma City.

Leigh would often return to the West for inspiration, making countless color studies and oil sketches to be later developed into larger, more ambitious pictures.  He spent every summer from 1912 to 1926 in the Southwest, often staying at a friend’s ranch.  He also did not mind mixing pleasure with pleasure, spending his honeymoon in 1921 camping and sketching at Monument Valley and Yellowstone.

Leigh observed nature and learned from it, but he was not its slave.  Here is some advice Leigh provided a fellow artist:  It’s all right to be in love with nature, but don’t be fanatical … All our pine trees look like Christmas trees, for instance.  Pick out those to paint that are more striking and picturesque.  If mountains are too somber a color – key it up, etc.  In painting distant hills that are made up of a lot of different colors … lay in the sky, then the hills on the horizon, etc. on down the picture and compare the hills to get their true color and value and so on.  But keep looking to see how much darker one color is to the next and their true color. 

Leigh would spend 1926 to 1935 in Africa, working with Carl Akeley and the American Museum of Natural History.  Much of the work that came from these expeditions is fascinating, but, it is rather a shame that left the sun-kissed landscapes of America for the Dark Continent.  It’s not surprising that once the African excursions were over, Leigh concentrated on Americana once again.

Today’s picture is from later in Leigh’s career (a scant nine year before his death).  It shows Leigh’s skills as a colorist with a vengeance, as well as his inherent sense of drama.  The Leader’s Downfall depicts a group of American Indians pursuing wild ponies and capturing the leader.  Let’s look at some of the things Leigh does so wonderfully well.

The main figure (the Indian on the paint horse with the rope) is in a ‘spotlight’ created by a brilliant white dust cloud.  As a technique for drawing attention to the central figure it would almost seem too obvious, but Leigh makes it work.  Also, in true Leigh fashion, the main figure is depicted in a manner of extreme realism in terms of the draftsmanship.  Look at the wild eyes and flaring nostrils of the horse, let alone the muscular flanks and bone structure.  In addition, look at the feathers and lovingly rendered saddle blanket – here is virtuosity for its own sake. 

The Indian frames his own formidable profile with both his right arm and the dust kicked up by the horse.  More important, look at the line of torso and the precisely detailed capturing of his rib cage and shoulder muscles.  Or look at the fingers holding the bunched coil of rope.  My love for Western artists Charles Russell and Frederic Remington is second-to-none, but this level of exactitude was outside of their purview.  The central figure of this painting is a remarkable performance.

As with the other pictures we have looked at, Leigh renders the supporting figures in softer focus, almost an Impressionist style.  The landscape itself is only the merest hint of actual countryside, and the horses and other Indians are carefully constructed suggestions.

But the real thing about this picture is the coloration.  Looking at The Leader’s Downfall over a protracted period of time may make your eyeballs fat.  Here is a man who loves color and is not afraid to use it.  The overarching blue, purple, violet tones are underscored by the hot white of the upswept dust, and Leigh manages to create “hot” action with “cool” colors.  It’s impossible not to look at this remarkable picture with a deep respect for both the artist’s skill and his audacity. 

More William Leigh tomorrow!

The Western Art of William R. Leigh Part I

As summer starts and we approach July 4^th, I wanted to touch upon the western art of William R. Leigh. 

There is a mistaken assumption that great art is a strictly European achievement.  However, many of the finest artists of the 19^th and 20^th centuries were here in the United States.  Not just Impressionists and Ash Can artists, but great masters who made as their subject the opening of the American West.

One of the artists overlooked in our veneration of the likes of Charles Russell (1864-1926) and Frederic Remington (1861-1909), is William Robinson Leigh (1866 –1955).  The three men were contemporaries, but Leigh managed to outlive the other two by some 30 years or more.  Like Russell, he was something of a wanderer, and made trips to the American West in search of subjects to paint.  While there, he made countless oil color studies that he brought back with him to his New York studio to further develop as full-scale pictures.  (Like another Western artist we have looked at, Charles Shreyvogel, most of his creations were executed here on the East Coast.)  Leigh was also something of a global explorer, going with the great taxidermist and sculptor Carl Akeley (1864 - 1926) to Africa.  (If you think you don’t know Akeley, think again: he is the man responsible for most of the great mounted exhibits in the American Museum of Natural History.)

Leigh was born in West Virginia and began his formal training at age 14 in the Maryland Institute in Baltimore.  At 17 he traveled to Germany, studying at the Royal Academy in Munich.  Leigh proved to be an industrious student; he worked with Karl Raupp in cast drawing and Nicolas Gysis in life drawing.  These men were superb teachers and Leigh learned much from them.  (As you may remember from earlier columns, Russell disdained formal art training.  One may well wonder what masterpieces he would’ve produced with a more solid sense of draftsmanship!)

Leigh also learned much from Ludwig von Loefftz.  His instruction emphasized an alla-prima painting method; this sense of spontaneity, along with Leigh’s already trained drawing methods, were a felicitous combination.  Leigh was now able to create vigorous, action-filled scenes with the precision and skill of a European master.

Leigh returned to the US in 1896, when he was 30, after 13 years studying abroad.  He lived in New York for 10 years, working primarily as an illustrator.  When Leigh hit 40 he ventured West to paint what was already a vanishing world.  As Stephen Gjerston writes in Frontiers of Enchantment: The Outdoor Studies of William R. Leigh: Leigh was able to break away and pursue his boyhood dream of painting the American West.  For Leigh, the West embodied everything that was intrinsically American.  Like Thomas Moran, he disapproved of American artists imitating foreign styles and was determined to paint pictures of the landscape and life that he considered to be uniquely American.  With his ability as a draftsman, his sense of drama and his eye for color Leigh was ideally suited to record the colorful and picturesque way of life in the Southwest; a way of life that was quickly vanishing.

Today we are looking at a picture called Master of His Domain, painted around 1920.  This is a good-sized oil, 40 x 30, currently in the Rockwell-Corning Museum, New York.  As already established, the draftsmanship is superb.  Look at how Leigh delineates the lanky muscles of the figure with clear, unfussy lines.  The face is powerful and introspective and never descends into caricature.  The left arm rests lazily on the bent leg; the right hand holds the right calf.  No excess of movement or line, just simple and natural, like the subject itself.  The quiver of arrows at his side is cleanly rendered, and particular attention is paid to his moccasins, armband and ornamental feathers.  This quiet virtuosity would not be out of place in the most finished production of the most skilled of European masters; indeed, the figure itself is a triumph of realism.

Where Leigh hits his masterstroke, though, is that he grounds this supremely realistic figure in a setting of almost Impressionist color.  The rocks, trees, cliff and sky are rendered in thick brushstrokes of color with little delineation or detail. 

In the barren but beautiful landscape, the figure is indeed master of his domain.  However, one cannot help but believe that Leigh was indulging in a bit of bitter irony with his title – this beautiful picture is also an elegy for an entire people and way of life.  The American Indian is indeed sitting on a pinnacle, but he will not be there for long.

More William Leigh tomorrow!

Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist

We close the week by returning yet again to the West of myth and of my yearnings and imaginings.  Why does the West of myth call to me so?  One would be hard pressed to find a place perhaps less suited to your garden variety aesthete, a man who prizes his lapis lazuli dressing gown more than any other article of clothing … or is that not quite so?  The West is a place of stunning natural beauty, and the myth of the men and women who made the West the very building blocks of literature and drama.  There is also a sense of freedom in the West, open ranges and the promise of endless opportunity.  Looking at images of the West, I feel young again.  And so, though some of my more waggish readers quip that I might someday need to rename this column The Jade Cactus, we will continue to look at art inspired by this uniquely American period of history.  (Besides, if Oscar Wilde could drink his way through the Old West while lecturing badmen and miners about Benvenuto Cellini, surely I can spend some time there in my imaginings.)

We have spent several columns looking at the work of Charles M. Russell, the famed “cowboy artist” (1864-1926).  Much has been written about Russell, some of it by the artist himself and his wife, Nancy Russell, and his studio assistant, Joe DeYong.  But there really was no full-scale, authoritative biography until Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist by John Taliaferro in 1996.  Taliaferro (born 1952), an independent historian and former senior editor for Newsweek, seems fascinated by classic Americana: another of his biographies is Tarzan Forever, the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Taliaferro’s Russell biography is a wonderful achievement: comprehensive, engagingly written, and put together with a deep sympathy for the man himself and his world.  Taliaferro tells us how Charlie, born of well-to-do parents back east, became enthralled with the West and became a cowboy before finding his own artistic voice and spending the rest of his life documenting what he saw with paint and canvas.  Charlie was perhaps his own greatest creation – he may have started out a dude, but he ended up the genuine article.

Much of what we “see” when we think of the West is the result of Russell and his contemporary, painter Frederic Remington (1861-1909).  These two artists, along with real-life scout and showman William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846-1917) created many of the visual cues that we associate with the West, and their vision continues up to today in movies and television.  (Indeed, Russell was a great friend of early screen cowboy William S. Hart, and the painter was often on the set as Hollywood started envisioning the West.)

Taliaferro gives great credit to Nancy Russell for making Charlie a success, and this is, in many ways, a joint biography.  Taliaferro is also a smart and perceptive critic – I have been reading about both Russell and Remington for years, and Taliaferro provides the best summation of the differences between the two men that I have ever read:

…who did he think he was, painting the West in such a savage light?  There lay the grudge, and there lay the difference between the two.  Over and over, Charlie would appropriate Remington’s subject matter and designs down to the most minute cock of a rifle or snort of a pony.  But he always injected a different mood and message.  Remington was in many ways terrified by the West and its boundless physicality.  Indians were depraved fiends; whites were always innocent victims or plucky heroes.  Where Remington’s Blackfeet were thugs dragging home hostages, Charlie’s were a bedraggled but brave family struggling through winter.  Or when Remington painted a circle of horses fighting off wolves with their hooves, he succeeded in conveying only grisly violence; in Charlie’s version, the put-upon horses are making a valiant stand to protect their helpless colts.  To Remington, a rider turning in his saddle to shoot at his pursuers is A Fugitive; to Russell, a man in the same situation is an honest soul fleeing to safety.  Where Remington assigns heartless cunning, Charlie sees a more honorable instinct.  And though Remington had better command of color and was a superior draftsman, in his Western work at least he strove to communicate only militancy, danger and dread.  Charlie’s untrained hand was forever guided by sympathy.

Taliaferro’s book closes sadly (as it must, at this late date) with Charlie’s physical decline and eventual death.  However, Charlie Russell, history’s cowboy artist, was an anomaly among great painters in more ways than one.  On any list of truly great artists, Charlie Russell may have been the one who was, by and large, truly happy.

Dan Muller, Cowboy Artist

I often find myself pulling down familiar books during the Christmas season.  Some, like the Christmas novels of Charles Dickens, are about the holiday itself.  Others, like the superb novel Monte Walsh (1963) by Jack Schaefer, have a Christmas-themed chapter that I find irresistible.

In the latter group I include My Life With Buffalo Bill by the artist Dan Muller.  Muller has a somewhat unique place in both Western American art and Buffalo Bill studies because his autobiography has met with controversy since its publication in 1948.

Let’s deal with the controversy first.  Daniel Cody Muller (1889-1976) was born in Choteau, Montana.  Muller’s father was killed by a horse when the artist was nine years old, and he was adopted by the famous frontiersman and showman, Col. William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody.  In his memoir (one of several books written by Muller), he writes of the 18 years he spent with Cody and of his time on both the Cody ranch and working the Wild West shows.

Muller records meeting cowboy artist Charles Russell in 1900, and that his art was influenced by Russell.  He served in World War I, breaking horses for the army, and later worked as both an artist and a ranch-hand.  (In My Life With Buffalo Bill, he ruefully remarks that he has had more success as a cowboy than an artist.)

Muller painted three 100-foot murals for the Travel and Transport exhibit of the Century of Progress Chicago World’s Fair, and spent the rest of his artistic career illustrating books and magazine covers, and painting as well.

The controversy of all this springs from the fact that there is very little documentation about Muller’s life with Cody, other than his own word.  Cody scholars are divided on whether the events happened as described by Muller, or whether Muller was mildly acquainted with Cody and that his powers of invention did not begin and end with graphic art alone.

As someone who has spent the better part of the last 15 years reading about Buffalo Bill Cody, I think that much of Muller's book has the ring of truth.  While he gets the occasional fact wrong, Muller almost always seems to get the emotional tenor of the man correct.  Cody was open-handed, warm-hearted, an easy touch for any friend in need, and a man of deep compassion and sympathy.  Muller would not be his only unofficially-adopted child: Cody also raised Johnny Baker, a sharpshooter with the Wild West, as his own son, and his love for children was nearly legendary.

Muller describes a Christmas morning at the Cody ranch: My presents were first because they were the last added to the pile.  Aunt Louisa [Cody’s wife] kissed me when she took off the rough wrapping paper and saw the picture of Irma [Cody’s daughter] I’d drawn for her.  Irma, when she opened hers and found the picture of the young man who had hung around the most just before she’d gone off to school, laughed and laughed and laughed.  “Dan, you old innocent, you,” she said.  “I haven’t even written that young man.  But now I see his picture I think I will.”

And Uncle Bill took his picture – it was as big as I could make it – and stood it up on the mantle.  “Why, Dan, that sure is scrumptious,” he said, grinning under his moustache.  “There’s your Pa, and the Mormon in the tree, and there, can yuh believe it, is me.  ‘Course I was younger ‘n that in those days.  But it sure ‘nough is me.  Look here,” he urged May, “Dan sure ‘nough got a good likeness!”

May [Cody’s sister] looked.  She didn’t sniff, but she looked like she wanted to.  “It’s pretty crude,” she said.

“Well, he didn’t have much t’work with, May,” Uncle Bill said.  “It’ll be different now.  Wait a minute, Dan, ‘til I find something here.”  He fished around in the pile and came up with a great big package.  “There, now, Dan, yuh’ll have all the fittin’s for drawin’.”

I tore off the wrapping in a hurry.  Inside was paper, great big sheets of paper much finer than the art paper they gave us to use in school.  Uncle Bill dug around some more and fished out two other packages.  “An’ here’s some more for yuh, Dan.”

My eyes got big.  More than one present for me.  I got the wrapping off in a hurry, you bet.  Inside were pencils of different kinds, a lot of crayons, some water colors, even some tubes – I later found they were oil paints – and lots of brushes!

I didn’t pay much attention to what other people were getting.  I just sat and handled those paints and brushes, thinking what pictures I could make with all those things to make them with!

Then Uncle Bill said loudly, “Dan, here’s something more for yuh.”

It was a great big package at the very bottom of the pile.  Uncle Bill spread his two arms wide to pick it up, and set it down in front of me.

“Yuh can’t always be makin’ pictures,” he said.  “Here’s somethin’ for yuh t’have some fun with, boy.”

There was an awful lot of wrapping paper around it.  I tore it away in great strips.  And then I saw what it was – a big red-painted wagon.

“Come spring,” Uncle Bill said, his eyes smiling along with his mouth, “yuh c’n start trainin’ that ol’ billygoat t’harness.”

Gosh!  What a Christmas!

There’s nothing in that Christmas morning description inconsistent with the Colonel Buffalo Bill Cody known and loved by many.

As for his art, Muller was a talented draftsman and a painter with a keen eye for composition.  Muller had a true gift in his depiction of horses, and managed to draw and paint pictures where rider and horse looked like a single connected unit, rather than poorly fitted-together components of different works. 

The Christmas card above comes from the Thomas Sica collection.  It was addressed to Buck Burshears, founder of the Koshare Indian Museum.  It amply demonstrates Muller’s deft touch and pleasantly illustrative style.

Collectors of Western art, unless they have very deep pockets indeed, can no longer acquire a Remington or a Russell.  However, there are many western artists of the second rank who are eminently collectible, and few have as interesting a back story as Dan Muller.  People interested in Muller should visit Tom Sica’s Web site, which is a treasure-trove of images and information.  It can be found here at: http://www.tomsica.com/index.html.

Saving Their Lieutenant by Charles Schreyvogel

I have been enjoying our time in the American Western frontier so much that I think we’ll stay there throughout the week.

Wits as diverse as Gene Autry (1907-1998) and Cole Porter (1891-1964) have made sport of the drug store cowboy, and a quick look at your correspondent would guarantee a snort of derision if any affectation were made of being a ‘real Western character.’  (The Upper West Side of Manhattan, perhaps, but no further!)

However, a deep and abiding love for the myth of the American West can be a potent and nourishing thing.  I have been entranced by the West ever since first researching a novel that would include cowboy star Tom Mix (1880-1939) and that has led to a lifelong love affair with Buffalo Bill Cody (1846-1917), Western movies, classic Western television and radio shows, and, of course, Western art.

It seems that many of the artists that have made the most substantive contributions in defining the way we think of the mythic American West have been tenderfeet, or worse, what would now be called Eastern Liberal Elites.  Figures as diverse as Owen Wister, Ned Buntline, Zane Grey and Frederick Remington were all Easterners.  To that list we must add painter Charles Schreyvogel (1861-1912). 

Schreyvogel spent most of his life an underappreciated (and underpaid) painter.  He grew up in New York’s Lower East Side, the poor son of German immigrant shopkeepers.  Unable to afford formal art training, Schreyvogel taught himself how to draw.  He won the Thomas Clarke Prize in 1901 at the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design.

Schreyvogel was enraptured by the myth of the West, then gaining terrific potency through dime novels and Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West.  A visit to Cody’s Wild West was a life-changing event for the young artist.  Schreyvogel would later make several trips West to paint Indians, but Cody and his theatrical milieu were his real creative wellspring.  He was a frequent guest at the Cody home, and his work is more a homage to the idea of the Wild West than a realistic depiction of the sort found in Russell and Remington (who hated Schreyvogel as a poseur).  In fact, one of his paintings, The Summit Springs Rescue, shows Cody in action against the Cheyenne. 

Schreyvogel’s paintings of the West now reside in the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma, and the Gilcrease Museum, also in Oklahoma.  Since the American West is filled with many ironies, it is irresistible to point out that many of these classic Western paintings were created in Schreyvogel’s studio in Hoboken, New Jersey.  (Annie Oakley was also a longtime New Jersey resident, living in Nutley.)

Saving Their Lieutenant is typical of Schreyvogel’s work.  It is a scene of dynamic action, seemingly coming right towards the viewer (a recurring motif in his work and clearly influenced by the Wild West shows of the era).  Horses and cavalrymen are clearly and cleanly depicted, while the barren Western landscape is rendered in a few economical strokes of color and detail.  The high country of the background is so subtle as to almost meld with the horizon point, creating the illusion of limitless depth and space to his vision of the West.

It takes perhaps a second glace at the painting to realize that the figure in the foreground is actually cradling his commanding officer in the crook of his arm.  The ‘hero’ of the painting manages to keep his lieutenant mounted while fighting off the suggested hoards of rampaging Native Americans in the background.  This is, perhaps, illustrative of Schreyvogel’s strongest quality, and the biggest difference between him and Russell and Remington.  Where Russell paints a lyrical and idyllic West, and Remington a West of hardship and travail, Schreyvogel’s West is a land of heroism.  He is the first great American painter influenced by the myth of the West rather than its actuality, and, as such, has become something of a mythic figure himself.