Christmas Meat, by Charles Marion Russell (1915)

Though it may not be entirely true that deep in the breast of every aesthete beats the heart of a cowboy, it is certainly true of Your Correspondent.  Thoughts of Christmas always seem to carry with them thoughts of the Wild West – it’s the way my brain is wired.  For many Bing Crosby is the voice of Christmas; at The Jade Sphinx, it’s Gene Autry.  (By the way, there is no better way to feel elderly – if not prehistoric – than by trying to explain who Gene Autry was to a young person.)

We have written about self-proclaimed ‘cowboy artist’ Charles Russell (1864-1926) before.  When we reviewed his letters and diary snippets, we were delighted to learn how wonderfully boyish and enthusiastic Russell was in person.  Russell never fully grew-up and he often approached his life, like his art, with a child-like sense of wonder.

So it comes as no surprise that Russell loved the Christmas season.  He would often retreat into his studio weeks before the holiday, designing his Christmas card(s), writing letters to close friends and oft-times painting a holiday-themed picture.

Today’s beautiful watercolor, Christmas Meat painted in 1915, is a picture of great warmth, despite the presence of snow.  In it, a Westerner brings a fresh-killed stag to a lone homesteader for Christmas dinner.  Russell painted many Christmas pictures with greater whimsy (Westerners coming across Santa during a snowy night, for example), but here he chooses instead to illustrate the holiday with a simple act of kindness.

In these days of easy consumption and near-instant gratification, we forget the every-day difficultly of the lives of previous generations.  Distances in the West were vast; a simple motor trip today would last several days on horseback.  People were extremely isolated on the countryside, with no phones, electronic entertainment, news, or, very frequently, neighbors. 

Russell, who went West in the waning days of the frontier, lived among the cowboys and knew how isolated it could all be.  But, he also loved the West, and was continually moved by the neighborliness, the open-handed generosity and many acts of human kindness he encountered there.

Let’s take a look at Christmas Meat.  As always, Russell’s command of anatomy is sketchy, at best (where, for example, is the rest of the cowboy’s left leg?), but he more he is more than able to pose his figures dramatically in the composition of narrative.  The outstretched hand, the visible smile, the bow-legs, and upheld rifle speak volumes – here’s Christmas dinner, pard, I got it myself.

And look at the homesteader!  Hand in his pants (so, clearly, a bachelor), complete with pipe and red union suit underwear, this man is clearly a character.  And his head leans forward in thanks, in appreciation, and admiration. 

Marvel at Russell’s sense of color.  Blue is the dominant color … and wonderfully suggests the cold.  The frozen trees in the distance are just impressionistic dabs of blue, as is the wooden smokehouse to the left.  Even the smoke from the cabin’s fireplace has a blueish tint … rest assured, it is cold outside.

Also, Russell uses the mountains of his backdrop to illustrate the expanse of the Western terrain.  There is no one for miles around; however, he undercuts the feeling of cold waste by a smart use of yellow.  The yellow light in the distance, along with the warm yellow of the window and doorway of the cabin, illustrate the warmth of human kindness at Christmas time.

The partially cut wood in the foreground may seem superfluous, but Russell, a master of composition, knew that something was essential there to keep the eye moving through the picture.  (It also serves to illustrate the cold … the homesteader does not tread far to get his firewood!)

This is a lovely little grace note of a picture, filled with honest feeling and a great deal of warmth.  It doesn’t descend into the overly sentimental, and it shows people at their best.

As such, it makes for a hell of a Christmas picture.

More Christmas books tomorrow!

These Three, Starring Merle Oberon, Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea (1936); Part of The Joel McCrea Blogathon

We are delighted to participate in Toby Roan’s Joel McCrea blogathon.  Toby is the mastermind behind the always-delightful 50 Westerns From the 50s blog (see link to your right), and Western lovers – and you know who you are – should visit regularly.

Joel McCrea (1905-1990) has long been one of our favorite actors.  He was equally terrific in comedies, dramas, love stories and westerns.  It would be hard to select a single McCrea performance as his definitive role, as it is really the body of his work that is most impressive.  Some actors – Clark Gable, Gary Cooper or Humphrey Bogart come to mind – often play extensions of themselves.  Their screen personas are so clearly delineated that they all play within the confines of their screen characters.

But McCrea’s art was more subtle.  It’s not that he always played himself so much as he always played … us.  One of the great (and certainly the most missed) inventions of the mid-20^th century was the idea of the American Everyman.  Sometimes comedic, sometimes crusading, always savvy, unfailingly honest and always representative of the best in ourselves, the American Everyman was an idealization that did not strain the truth.  This is how Americans once saw themselves, and few actors better exemplified the American Everyman, with all his flaws and virtues, better than McCrea.  We didn’t want to be him, but, on our best days, we were him.

It’s not surprising that McCrea would eventually morph into a western specialist.  The West is the defining American myth, and McCrea was our surrogate in that world.  Whether opposing outlaws, crooked business interests, Washington fat cats or homicidal Indians, McCrea met the challenges of the West with honesty, integrity and modesty.  McCrea was the natural choice to play many of the great figures of the West, Wyatt Earp and Buffalo Bill Cody among them, because we would like to see these great figures much like we like to see ourselves.  He made them real by making them like us.

It is too easy to forget how terrific an actor he could be when rising to a challenge. There are two versions of Lillian Hellman’s (1905-1984) 1934 play, The Children’s Hour, and the 1936 version, called These Three and staring McCrea and directed by William Wyler (1902-1981), is easily the best.

Wyler would remake the film himself in 1961, with James Garner (1928-2014) in the McCrea role.  Because the play deals with two women teachers who find their lives ruined when a little girl accuses them of a lesbian relationship, one imagines that the later film would be superior, if for no other reason than Wyler could openly address the scandal.  However, that is not the case:  Wyler’s handling of the situation in 1936 actually has great emotional resonance and honesty.  His 1961 film is so over-the-top in its hysteria, that it lurches into melodrama, and then camp.

With his 1936 cast, Wyler had to change the story to fit the Hays Code: here, a little girl (the magnificent Bonita Granville – justifiably Oscar nominated) ruins the lives of teachers Merle Oberon (1911-1979) and Miriam Hopkins (1902-1972) by starting the rumor that the women are involved in a ménage à trois with local doctor, McCrea.  As a result, their school is ruined and they are later financially crushed when they unsuccessfully sue for libel.

McCrea – quietly heroic, rankling at injustice and eager to set things right – stands by both women.  It’s not that McCrea has any showy scene or overly dramatic monolog: no, it’s his presence.  Here once again McCrea is our surrogate, doing his best in an unwinnable situation … much as we hope we would behave ourselves.  In the later film, Garner (usually a more subtle actor) broadcasts at high volume his integrity and decency, becoming a cartoon.  McCrea just … is, the perfect friend and protector that we would want to be.

Amazingly, Wyler wanted to replace McCrea with Leslie Howard (1893-1943), which would have been a catastrophe.  A terrific actor (in fact, a better actor than McCrea), Howard would have played his helplessness in the situation, providing only dignified weakness, much like his turn in Gone With the Wind (1939).  The friction between Wyler and McCrea is not evident, and one wonders if he changed his mind after the finished film. 

One final note – the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves reflect our points of view and how we interact with the world.  That sense of a national identity – and American Everyman – is impossible in our currently fractured state.  Wouldn’t we be better off if we had a presence like Joel McCrea … who reflected the best impression of ourselves? 

One cannot help but think that we need a hero, not a figure in tights with superpowers, but one who embodies the best qualities in Americans as a people.  I, for one, would certainly welcome the return of more actors like Joel McCrea.

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.

Laugh Kills Lonesome, by Charles Marion Russell (1925)

It’s no secret that we here at The Jade Sphinx love the work of Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), the cowboy artist.  The boyish Russell went West in his early youth, and worked as a cowboy, watching the waning days of the American West with an artist’s eye.  He didn't seem to be very effective in the saddle, but it was all he wanted and he was happy.

Charlie not only loved life, he loved his life.  He wanted to be a cowboy in his earliest boyhood, and went West as soon a he had the chance. 

Charlie’s vision of the West was a boyish one, full of endless prairies and freedom.  His was an eternal boyhood – both promise and nostalgia at the same time.  The West (and his boyhood) became to him a Lost Eden which he missed and to which he could never return.

The sense of loss, though, was not a bitter nor astringent one.  In fact, it grew into some of a sweet wistfulness.  Charlie was too happy a man – too content with life and his place in it – to allow loss to play to great a part.  It’s a lesson we can all take from this maddeningly simple yet complex man.  The more I read about Charlie, the more I think I know him, the more I feel some vital core essence of the man is slipping through my fingers.

This week, we will look at three of Charlie’s pictures.  (I only think of him as “Charlie,” it’s almost impossible to think of him under his full moniker.)  They are not necessarily his best (nor most representative pictures), but they illustrate something of his philosophy, I think.

Exhibit A: Laugh Kills Lonesome, painted in 1925 and now in the Mackay Collection in Helena, Montana.  It was painted just a year before Charlie went to the Last Roundup, and if ever an artist painted an end-of-life farewell, it is this.

Charlie paints the figures in a markedly sketchy manner: it’s not verisimilitude he is after, but mood.  The sky and surrounding landscape are simply laid out in muted, cool colors.  The moon shines brilliantly in the distance, and the stars seem almost heavenly, but they do no wash the picture with cool light – they are distant and fairly unobtainable.

The realm warmth of the picture comes from the campfire, which brings a warm glow to the chuck wagon, a few simple tools, and the cowboys themselves.  There is nothing of particularly high mark in their attitudes or actions; it is simply a group of men content after a hard life of labor, loving the outdoors, their lives, and one another.  One of them smokes a contemplative cigarette, another pours the last of the coffee, and two of them share a game of cards.

But the arresting figure is the man standing on the right, hat back, coat open, body receptive to capture the campfire’s warmth.  Who is it but our old friend, Charlie Russell, the Cowboy Artist.  We have seen in the past that Charlie was not averse to putting himself into his own work, and there he is, holding his lariat, smoking a cigarette, and perhaps looking at the fire die down as his own life draws to a close.

Charlie was in ill health for the final years of his life, and he is evidently looking at his own past in this painting.  But it is not a look of regret or of loss; if anything, it’s a look of satisfaction.

Perhaps the truest nugget of the real Charlie Russell can be found in the picture’s title:  Laugh Kills Lonesome.

There, in a nutshell, is the essence of Charlie Russell.

You’d Do It For Randolph Scott…

Today is the birthday actor Randolph Scott (1898-1987) and we here at The Jade Sphinx are delighted to participate in the Randolph Scott Blogathon, sponsored by Toby Roan and his wonderful site, 50 Westerns From the 50s.

In thinking about the many attributes of this fine performer, I came to realize that he was not only a capable Western performer, but someone who personified the most admirable attributes of a Western Hero.

Born George Randolph Scott, this tall, handsome Southerner hailed from Virginia.  From a well-off family, he attended private schools (which, clearly, added a level of polish that was evident in his acting), and was an excellent athlete, concentrating on swimming and football.  When the Great War came around, he enlisted and saw action in France.  He returned home and went to college, dropping out before earning his degree and joining his father at the textile firm.

But … something about acting has also intrigued the handsome Virginian, and he moved West, thinking of a career in the movies.  He worked as a bit player and extra in several films, and then worked on stage to further develop his abilities.  After time he garnered a contract from Paramount, and went on to star in a series of Westerns based on the novels of Zane Grey.  His first important, starring role was in Heritage of the Desert (1932), and he went on to make 10 B Westerns for Paramount in their Zane Grey series.  A Western star was born.

Well … not quite.  In his early career, the Virginian starred in a wide variety of movies, including musicals (including turns with Shirley Temple!), comedies, crime pictures and adventure movies.  He appeared in everything from the science-fantasy She (1935) to the musical Roberta, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

But it was in Westerns that the Virginian made his most significant impact.  He would appear in more than 100 films, but the majority of them would be Westerns.  In his early Westerns, he is capable – and, in bigger-budgeted pictures, often the second banana.  But as he aged, he brought to his Western performances a gravitas, a hardness, and a touch of tragedy.  He wears stoicism like a suit of armor, only emerging from under it to write wrongs and mete out justice.

His face and body only improved with age.  As the Virginian entered his 50s, he lost much of his callow handsomeness, leaving him with an impressive, sculptural beauty.  It is a handsome face, but one carved from stone, with all the strength and impassivity associated with rock.  His muscular frame became leaner and harder as the Virginian aged into indestructability.  It is almost impossible to imagine, in these days of films made almost exclusively for addled children and undemanding adults, such a mature action hero.  But the maturity and the gravity were key ingredients to the Virginian’s later greatness; without them, he was diminished.

This Western persona hit its stride in the 1950s, and was particularly majestic in a series of seven Westerns he made with director Budd Boetticher (1916-2001).  Each and every one is a small masterpiece in its way, with the best being Ride Lonesome (1959).  When introducing people new to Westerns to the genre, this is usually the film I chose … and if you only see one Western, it may as well be this one.

When thinking about Scott and his Western screen persona for this retrospective, I realized that the actor had seemingly walked off of the very pages of the first great Western novel, The Virginian, written in 1902 by Owen Wister (1860-1938).

Like the nameless Virginian, Scott was a tall, handsome native of that state.  Like Wister’s hero, he would come to represent all of the virtues of the Western Hero – justice, chivalry, integrity, mercy and a sense of honor.  He is a straight-shooter, a man of moral substance and of self-respect.  He has seen it all and it has cost him much; but it has not made him bitter or hateful … merely watchful.  He is self-possessed and a gentleman around women, but not a ‘ladies man’ in the traditional sense.

For all of his exterior hardness and privacy, there is warmth and approachability in both Virginians.  There is a flinty hint of laughter around the crinkles of his eyes, and a wry humor.  Both Virginians live simply, speak honestly and are nature’s noblemen.  As the narrator in Wister’s novel says, often in their spirit sat hidden a true nobility, and often beneath its unexpected shining their figures took a heroic stature.

Scott’s final film was the excellent Ride the High Country (1962), which may be only good film by Sam Peckinpah.  In it, Scott and fellow-Western star Joel McCrea (1905-1990) are aging lawmen tasked with transporting gold across the frontier.  Both have lived hard lives, and both have seen the world change too much.  During the trip, one of the pair plans to make off with the gold and fund a comfortable retirement.  Playing against type – Scott plays the potential thief.

The real joy of High Country is the continual interplay between McCrea and Scott.  Originally, the roles were to be reversed, with Scott playing the honest and honorable lawman, and McCrea the more cynical, out-for-what-he-can-get ex-lawman.  However, during the initial reading, both realized that switching parts would be more effective, and they were entirely correct.  McCrea’s flat, Midwestern delivery is perfect for the moral compass of the picture, and Scott, in the role of a lifetime, uses his rich, Virginian accent to great effect as he makes sardonic, pithy remarks throughout the film.  In fact, his running commentary is one of the most satisfying elements of the screenplay, and the timbre of his voice is essential. 

Throughout the 1950s (and much of the 1940s), the Virginian focused primarily on Western films, and he brought to his performances the full weight of his screen image, and he played upon audience expectations of who he was and what he would do.

There have been many Western stars who rode tall in the saddle, but the Virginian, Randolph Scott, was one of the most impressive.  With his calm demeanor, steely reserve and moral compass, he was a reflection of the best part of ourselves.

The Homesman, By Glendon Swarthout

One of the most successful western novels of the latter part of the last century was The Shootist (1975), by Glendon Swarthout (1918-1992).  This fine novel was later made into an even better John Wayne film of the same name in 1976, which would prove to be not only Wayne’s last western, but his last film, as well.  It was a fitting coda to a career in the saddle.

Needless to say, it was with some excitement that I found his book The Homesman (1988) at my local bookshop.  It was, however, a significant disappointment.

The setup is wonderful:  during a crippling winter, three women living hardscrabble pioneer lives go insane.  The opening chapter includes a graphic moment when one of these unfortunates murders her new-born baby by dropping it into the outhouse pit.  The book struggles to recover its grounding after this brutal opening.

It is decided that the three women need to be taken back east to a religious institution that deals with unbalanced women.  Their husbands – a fairly brutish lot – abrogate their responsibilities, so someone else must escort these women through dangerous Indian country.  But who?

Enter Mary Bee Cuddy, an ex-teacher, spinster and independent woman.  She volunteers for this perilous mission, but realizes that she cannot do it alone.  Fortunately, she saves from lynching George Briggs, a sidewinder and general hard-case who is getting his neck stretched for claim jumping.  Saving his life, she makes a bargain with him to take the deranged women back east.

Of course, they meet every expected plot complication: storms, Indians, rampaging cattlemen and dwindling supplies.

The Homesman won both the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award and the Western Heritage Wrangler Award, and I sure had high hopes.  However, The Homesman is a failure in almost every regard.  Though it may sound as high-concept as Little House on the Prairie Goes to Hell, it’s never quite that good.

First, Mary Bee Cuddy never really comes alive – she is simply a walking cliché.  Imagine the wonderful Marjorie Main (1890-1975) in buckskin, and all the character development you need is already in your head.  It is almost as if Swarthout was merely notching things on the standard checklist for salty western women: homely?  Check.  Brassy and tough?  Check.  Spinster and ex-teacher?  Check and check.  Worse yet, and I will spoil this for you to save reading the book, Cuddy hangs herself midway through the novel after Briggs rejects her attempts to seduce him.  This is a plot point that comes completely from left field, and once Swarthout kills his point-of-view character, what little there was to savor is gone. 

Briggs, of course, is a western lowlife according to the standard template: bad man with inherent decency.  He is never believable for an instant. 

Swarthout commits his greatest sin by leaving the three, poor madwomen nothing more than ciphers.  Here is an opportunity for any novelist to really shine … but aside from glazed stares and greatly internalized suffering, there is nothing there.  

Perhaps your correspondent is sadly warped, but slogging through this turgid potboiler, I could not help but wait for the funny part.  It never came.

And then – it dawned on me.  In other hands, what a delicious comedy this would be!  Keep almost the same set up, but think Bob Hope as Briggs, and someone like Ethel Merman as Mary Bee Cuddy.  Throw in Phyllis Diller, Martha Raye and Zasu Pitts as the madwomen, and you have something.  At least it would be more interesting (if certainly not more enjoyable) than The Homesman.

My paperback copy says that this is Soon To Be a Major Motion Picture With Tommy Lee Jones.  It would seem that the story of my life is that I’m waiting for Bob Hope and instead I get Tommy Lee Jones.  I hope that he may be able to raise a few laughs, but we are not optimistic….

Empire of the Summer Moon, by S. C. Gwynne

Well … wow.  Having read deeply about the American West for two decades, I had thought that there would be few surprises left in store for me.  And then, happily, I came across S. C. Gwynne’s masterful, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.  If you read only one book about the so-called Indian Wars, let it be this one.

The North American aboriginal people have been so romanticized and sanitized since the drug-addled 1960s – which re-envisioned them peyote-dropping, love-happy hippies – that contemporary readers have lost sight of just how brutal and dangerous they were.  The Plaines Indians were really more of a Stone Age people, resistant to change, without a written language or cultural attainments, totally lacking in science, and predicated on a life of horsemanship and continual warfare.  They were a truly formidable foe to settlers in the American West who came from a tradition of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and a muscular Christianity.  The worlds of the Western settlers and the Indians were as alien to one-another as to be almost other-worldly.

Settlers were completely unprepared for the level of savagery -- wanton rape, torture and mutilation were common currency among the Comanche -- and the battle between both peoples soon devolved into greater brutality on both sides.  Gwynne is utterly matter-of-fact in placing blame on both sides – there was more than enough violence to go around.  The history here is neutral, and the lack of a sanitized take is sure to discomfort partisans of either side of the issue.

Gwynne frames this sad history with the stories of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son, the Comanche chief Quanah.  As a girl, Cynthia Ann watched as Comanches brutally murdered and raped most of her family.  Kidnapped to help increase Comanche numbers (the mortality of Comanche infants was incredibly high, and kidnapped women were chattel for child-bearing), she worked as a slave to a Comanche band.  Eventually, she would become one of the wives of Peta Nocona, one of the most powerful of Comanche raiders.

However, her uncle James Parker spent years and years searching for Cynthia Ann.  (Yes, this story became the model for the John Ford film, The Searchers, in 1956.)  He never did find her, but the adult Cynthia Ann was found among the survivors after a military raid and returned to her family, along with her child, Prairie Flower.  Cynthia Ann is an incredibly poignant figure – ripped from one reality as a child and forced into another, and then, ripped from that and brought back into a world she no-longer knew.  A lifetime among the Comanche had left her completely unprepared for Western life, and she sickened and died, mourning the loss of her world, her husband, and her son, Quanah.

Quanah fared much better than his mother.  One of the most recalcitrant leaders of Comanche bands, he raided, stole horses and killed many before he accepted life on the reservation.  While there, he decided to beat the settlers at their own game, becoming something of a businessman by manipulating fees for use of his land, building a grand house, and shaming the government into additional funds.  He actually can be seen in a short Western film (the first two-reeler) shot in 1908, The Bank Robbery.  It can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q87ooO6B74.

When not focusing on the Parkers, Gwynne writes about Ranald S. Mackenzie, the man who would destroy the Comaches and become America’s greatest Indian fighter.  He graduated first in his class from West Point (the same year of George Armstrong Custer), and would later befriend and educate Quanah.  We also meet the fiery Jack Hays, the greatest of the Texas Rangers, and the source of countless legends of the Old West.  It was said that before Hays, Americans came into the West on foot carrying long rifles, and that after Hays, everybody was mounted and carrying a six-shooter.

S. C. Gwynne is a journalist who writes for The Dallas Mornings News, and is a former bureau chief and senior editor at Time.  What he seeks to do with the hauntingly titled Empire of the Summer Moon is paint on an extremely large canvas the full immensity of events during the Indian Wars of Texas and Oklahoma.  It is peopled with many heroes, more than its share of villains, and many who were a little bit of both.  It is set against a dazzling (and deadly) landscape, and encompasses several decades.  The book is rich in history, drama, violence and humanity.  It comes very highly recommended.

The Art of Alfredo Rodríguez, Part II: American Indian

We are spending this week looking at the work of Mexican-born artist Alfredo Rodríguez (born 1954), who currently lives in California. 

Rodríguez, like many of his generation, grew up to be obsessed with the American West.  It’s important to remember that though Westerns are few and far between today, that the 1950s and 1960s were a boom time for Western films and television shows; comedian Bob Hope once quipped that NBC meant “Nothing But Cowboys.”  While a boy growing up in Mexico, Rodríguez got a steady diet of American television Westerns playing in reruns.  Like many of his generation, he was marked for life.

Rodríguez’s work has been covered in such books as Western Painting Today by Royal B. Hassick,  and Contemporary Western Artists by Peggy and Harold Samuels; he has also been covered ins such magazines as Art of the West, Western Horseman, and International Fine Art Collector. He has illustrated textbooks and histories, as well, and the prolific artist is one of the most successful contemporary painters in the Western genre.

We at The Jade Sphinx wax and wane on our admiration for Rodríguez.  His efforts to keep the American West alive are met here with riotous applause.  So, too, are his abilities as an artist.  We just wish he had better taste.

Today’s picture is a case in point.  It is quite striking – Rodríguez’s skill at drawing is in full display here.  Look at the network of fine lines etched into the subject’s face, let alone the shadow of his long hair playing against his cheek.  More impressive still are the feathers atop his head, created with such complete control of line and contour as to be surprisingly lifelike.

His sense of coloration is more subdued here than yesterday’s picture – though the dramatic sky, dotted with clouds and merging into the wooded background is perhaps a bit too calculated.  And there, in short, is our problem with the work.  This is a picture calculated to its every brushstroke.  Not that all great pictures are not planned – that’s not exactly what we mean here.  Instead, it seems as if Rodríguez were checking off a list of tropes necessary or expected for this type of picture, and delivering them without comment or insight.

Is our Indian stoic and insightful?  Check.  Brilliant blue sky and wide-open spaces?  Check and check.  Peaceful village rendered in desert colors?  Check.  Water, grass and teepees?  Check, check, check.  It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this picture – it is actually quite splendidly done – it’s just that there is little-to-no point of view and composed by route.  One cannot help but wish that Rodríguez harnessed that remarkable technical ability into a more personal statement on the West.

It makes a superb cover for a paperback Western; as a finished work of art that stands alone on its ability to move us, it falls short.

More Rodríguez tomorrow!

The Art of Alfredo Rodríguez, Part I: Profile of a Chief (2006)

This past week, we were lucky enough to entertain a dear friend who is also deeply devoted to the arts.  We were talking about the art world in general and The Jade Sphinx in particular when he opined, “you know, you may want to write about artists who are still alive every now and then.”

Astonishing thought…

At the same time, I had been reading S. C. Gwynne’s masterful Empire of the Summer Moon, a look at the Comanches, who were at one time most powerful Indian tribe in American history.  (Expect more on this book, later – it is magnificent.)  And that called to mind the paintings of Alfredo Rodríguez (born 1954).

Rodríguez started drawing and painting in his earliest boyhood; it was as natural to him as learning to walk or speak.  He was born in Mexico, and grew up fascinated by stories of the American West.  The West of his imagination is peopled with strong, colorful Indians, prospectors, homesteaders, and miners.  His pictures have been corralled by private collectors and several corporations, and he currently exhibits at numerous invitational art shows around the country, including the Masters of the American West at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, as well as in the Heritage Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, The West Lives On Gallery in Jackson, Wyoming, and the Art Pacific Gallery in Wailea, Hawaii. Collectors include the late Gene Autry, actress Connie Stevens, and Pilar Wayne (widow of actor John Wayne).

Rodríguez became a professional artist 1968 and made a steady career of magazine illustration before moving into fine art painting.  He has been a remarkably prolific painter, and his oeuvre varies remarkably in quality.  There are works that have a striking, stark declarative power – here is the past as I see it, peopled by remarkable giants now long gone.  Other pictures, particularly those involving children or family scenes, are sentimental and soft … bordering dangerously on kitsch.  Like many painters who have had to make a living in the extremely competitive field of magazine illustration, Rodríguez often panders rather than paints.  However, when Rodríguez is at the top of his game, he is quite something.

Today’s painting, Profile of a Chief (2006), exemplifies all that is great and questionable in Rodríguez’s work.  The technical aspects of Rodríguez’s work here are quite wonderful: notice, the superb draughtsmanship in the depiction of the face, or, better yet, the brushwork that not only delineates the lines of various feathers, but moves them in-and-out of shafts of light.  Though the visible hand has aged into a claw, the deep lines in the knuckles and stained thumbnail are clearly visible.  The beadwork is rendered with loving detail, and the fringe of his buckskin has a wonderfully tactile quality.

And yet … and yet, Rodríguez becomes the victim of his own desire to please.  The coloration of the picture, though striking, is simply too … much.  It is if Rodríguez almost did not trust his own considerable talent enough, and felt the need to overcompensate, to dazzle with color to hide any possible defects in the drawing.  Many contemporary painters are guilty of this – extremely talented men and women who, without the long tradition of atelier training to provide confidence and context, default to excess to guarantee success. 

For all of its excesses, though, Profile of a Chief is a well-executed picture.

More Rodríguez tomorrow!

Buffalo Bill Cody With Children (Date Unknown)

It is rare that we look at photos here at The Jade Sphinx, but this photo has always touched me; so much so that a copy hangs on the wall over my desk.  It is of frontiersman, scout, Pony Express Rider and showman William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846-1917) in a tent on the grounds of his Wild West Show, telling yarns to his little pards.

By all reports, Cody was a lovely man.  He never refused an old friend, a hard luck story, or a child.  Cody was extremely open-handed, friendly and willing to take care of others (except, perhaps, his wife, Louisa). 

You may remember that we have previously covered the story of cowboy artist Daniel Cody Muller (1889-1976), who was born in Choteau, Montana.  Muller’s father was killed by a horse when the artist was nine years old, and he was soon after adopted by Buffalo Bill.  In his memoir, Muller writes of the 18 years he spent with Cody and of his time on both the Cody ranch and working the Wild West shows.  The Cody in Muller’s memoir is a warm-hearted man of deep compassion and sympathy.  Muller would not be Cody’s only unofficially-adopted child: he also raised Johnny Baker (1869-1931), a sharpshooter with the Wild West, as his own son, and his love for children was nearly legendary.  Indeed, in a tumultuous life of adventure, fame and cowboy-high-spirits, the sole tragedy of Cody’s life seems to be the loss of his son, Kit Carson Cody (1870-1876) to scarlet fever.

To get a flavor of the real man, there is a story that during the 1915 season, when Cody no longer owned the Wild West and was working for the Sells-Floto circus, the show was menaced by a flash flood in Fort Madison, Iowa.  Most of the show’s four hundred crew fled the scene, leaving the aged and infirm Buffalo Bill to rescue women and children with the help of five crewmembers.  Also while working for Sells-Floto, he would later grow enraged when he learned that executives had advertised a twenty-five cent admission fee and charged fifty cents at the door.  Not long after, Cody pulled his gun on the owners and demanded out of his contract.

In more than 15 years of reading obsessively about the Old West, there are only two figures who I desperately wished to have met: cowboy artist Charlie Russell (1864-1926) and Cody.  And when I picture him in my mind’s eye, it is more often in photos like the above rather than imagining him in his more perilous endeavors.

Though today’s photo was obviously staged, look at the avuncular Cody in full Wild West regalia, head slightly bowed so the sun catches his oversized Stetson and glistening white beard.  The camera catches him mid-story, holding what appears to be a piece of Native American embroidery.  Though the little girls are dressed in white and organdy pinafores, things are rough in the back area of the Wild West Show.  This is a place for play and fun and myth.  As usual, Bill is making time for everyone.

I cannot help but think of later photos of other Western Icons surrounded by children.  A quick search on the Internet would yield photos of Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy surrounded by children – but, as usual, Cody got there first.  I believe that it was he that created and fostered the myth of the Western Hero as the friend of childhood, a trope that has been with us for over 100 years.

Take a moment and imagine ourselves back there.  We’ve seen the Wild West (or are about to), and sneak behind to the performer’s tents.  There is the great man himself, impossibly tall and romantic in his colorful western clothes.  He beckons us over and we sit, while he unfolds a tale of Western Adventure, of days gone by and pioneer adventure.  We listen as he talks, his aged voice rich and dramatic, and the whole pageantry of the West opens before us.  And we know that once that great voice and great heart are stilled, the West will really be gone forever.