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!

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.

An Assault on His Dignity by Frederick Remington

In an earlier post we discussed the influence of Charlie Russell, the cowboy artist, on our collective memory of the American West.  Russell shared the honor of being the premiere artist of that time and place with another gifted painter, Frederick Remington (1861-1909).  Though there is a great commonality in the approach and aesthetic of both painters, each man had a radically different vision of the West.

The West of Russell is a gentler place; there are certainly rough-and-tumble aspects and very real danger, but, in essence, Russell’s West was a boy’s dream of freedom and escape.  Russell thought the West was a rapidly vanishing Eden, and longing and innocence are almost always part of his work.

Remington’s West was a place infinitely more harsh.  The common image of a bleached skull of a steer (shorthand for the badlands of the west in everything from films to animated cartoons) was first used by Remington; indeed, it became for him something of a motif.  It is not unusual in Remington to find cavalry men defending a waterhole in the pitiless American desert, or American Indians run down in defeat, exhausted and hopelessly outgunned, or men on horseback fleeing a raging storm. 

The figures in Remington often have a remarkable energy, and he was masterful in his depiction of the horse-in-motion.  He style was loose, almost like that of the Impressionists working then in Europe, and he was a gifted draughtsman that could work in oil, watercolor, and pen and ink.  Later in his career, he was a gifted sculptor in bronze, as well.

Initially, Remington intended to be a journalist, drawing and painting on the side.  He began his art studies in 1878 at the newly formed School of Fine Arts at Yale, in New Haven, CT.  He also studied, for only a few months, at the Arts Students League in New York.  However, Remington was not temperamentally equipped for formal art training: drawing from plaster casts left him chomping at the bit.  He started roaming the American West in 1881, travelling through the Dakotas, Montana, the Arizona Territory and Texas.  He returned east in 1882 and started providing illustrations for Harper’s Weekly. 

In a 1905 article in Collier's Remington later recalled his early inspiration for depicting Western subjects, writing: "I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever….And the more I considered the subject, the bigger the forever loomed. Without knowing exactly how to do it, I began to try to record some facts around me, and the more I looked the more the panorama unfolded … I saw the living, breathing end of three American centuries of smoke and dust and sweat."

Remington collaborated with Own Wister (1860-1938), author of the first significant Western novel, The Virginian (1902) on The Evolution of the Cowpuncher, published in Harper’s Monthly in 1893; Remington provided the concept for the project, including factual information, and Wister wrote the stories.  It is a cornerstone work of the Western genre.

An extraordinarily fat man, Remington died after an emergency appendectomy led to peritonitis on Boxing Day, 1909. His weight complicated the anesthesia and the surgery, and chronic appendicitis was cited in the post-mortem examination as an underlying factor in his death. 

An Assault on His Dignity is a wonderfully representative work of Remington’s oeuvre.  The cowpunchers that surround the American Indian boy are painted with a few deft strokes, but there is more than sufficient detail to provide each figure with a distinct character.  The men lean forward on their saddles with a predatory pose, as if ready to reach out for the boy. 

But look closely at the composition.  As the cowpunchers surround and loom over the very small Indian boy, the shadows of the men and horses are dark and oppressive on the parched scrub.  The boy, who is naked (or nearly naked) boasts no saddle or hat, and looks into the distance, away from his tormentors.  His face is beardless and almost half-formed: the face of an infant.  He cannot allow himself the luxury of a reaction, as the cowpunchers would use that, too, against him; however, his horse is bug-eyed and alert to danger.  As always with Remington, the horses have both monumentality and grace of movement – each animal is believable and three-dimensional.  The extraordinary expanse of the Western horizon is delineated by a limited palette of warm yellows and cool blues and whitish purples, demarking great distance. 

Remington, with great economy of style, centrally locates the victim (the Indian boy), surrounding him with predators in a desolate landscape.  There is no help to be had, and he is all alone in the wide-open spaces: a unique type of sunlit terror.