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!