Title: The Mentor: Painters of Western Life, Vol 3, Num. 9, Serial No. 85, June 15, 1915
Author: Arthur Hoeber
Release date: December 31, 2015 [eBook #50803]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
LEARN ONE THING EVERY DAY
JUNE 15 1915
SERIAL NO. 85
THE
MENTOR
PAINTERS
OF
WESTERN LIFE
By ARTHUR HOEBER
Author and Artist
DEPARTMENT OF
FINE ARTS
VOLUME 3
NUMBER 9
TWENTY CENTS A COPY
“Suppose,” said Thomas Huxley, “it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don’t you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces? Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn upon the father who allowed his son, or the State which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight?”
“Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and more or less of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.”
“The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know to our cost that he never overlooks a mistake or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity which with the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated—without haste, but without remorse.”
COURTESY KNOEDLER & CO.
THE LAST STAND. By Frederic Remington
“THE LAST STAND,” by Frederic Remington, a strong and stirring picture of a dramatic incident in army life, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Painters of Western Life.”
Monograph Number One in The Mentor Reading Course
Remington’s life was as full of vigor and action as his pictures. Outdoor life and athletic sports were always a hobby of his. When he was at Yale he was on Walter Camp’s original football team, when Camp was practically inventing the American game, and Remington assisted him.
Frederic Remington was born at Canton, a little village in St. Lawrence County, New York State, in 1861. His father, a newspaper man, wanted to train him to follow the same profession; but Remington’s taste for dabbing at art was too strong. In the Yale Art School he picked up a little about art and a great deal about football. He could not accommodate himself to college routine; so he tried life for awhile as confidential clerk for Governor Cornell at Albany. This job was too quiet for him; so he threw it up and went out to Montana to “punch cows.” Remington became a downright, genuine cowboy, and his four years in the saddle brought him the accurate, minute knowledge of horses, Indians, cattle, and life on the plains that marks his work.
After roughing it as a cowboy, Remington went to Kansas and started a mule ranch, made some money at it, then wandered south, taking a turn as ranchman, scout, guide, and in fact anything that offered. When his money was gone his mind turned back to art. As he said, “Now that I was poor I could gratify my inclination for an artist’s career. In art, to be conventional, one must start out penniless.” So he made some drawings which the Harpers accepted. The material was fresh and full of spirit; so Remington got an order to go west and get up illustrations for a series of articles on the life of the plains. He was lucky enough to strike in on an Indian campaign. His success as an illustrator was so great that he never after lacked for commissions. He even went as far as Russia in 1892. Gradually people came to know that a new and vigorous personality had taken his stand in the field of art, and that his name was Frederic Remington. His sketches and paintings of soldiers, Indians, cowboys, and trappers were full of character, and came to be known far and wide both as illustrations and as independent works of art.
Remington brought all his subjects fresh from life straight to his canvas. He lived an active outdoor life, worked hard, and was ever seeking for new material. It was his dream to go to a real war, and in 1898 he got his chance. The well known playwright, Augustus Thomas, for years a neighbor of Remington’s, states that he called the artist up early one morning in February, 1898, and told him that the Maine had been blown up and sunk. The only thanks or comment he got was a shout from Remington, “Ring off!” As Thomas rang off he could hear Remington call the private telephone number of his publishers in New York. At that very minute the artist was in his mind already entered for war service.
The latter years of Remington’s life were spent in various trips and in periods of quiet work in his home studio at New Rochelle, New York. There anyone could find him—big, simple and good-natured, modest and plain-spoken, working out his vigorous compositions in a large roomy studio most appropriately constructed and decorated for his purpose.
His collection of relics of all sorts and from all quarters of the world was unique. Aside from his painting and modeling, Remington was justly celebrated for his writing. His descriptive powers were vivid and telling, and his stories, which fill several volumes, are full of living interest.
Remington died very suddenly of pneumonia on December 26, 1909. His place in American art is unique. There is no one quite like him. He knew his power, and he exercised it with ease and confidence. His work was his life, and his life was with strong, primitive types of men and with animals, all of whom he loved. The epitaph he wanted for himself was, “He knew the Horse.”
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 3. No. 9. SERIAL No. 85
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
IN THE POSSESSION OF THE ARTIST
WILD HORSE HUNTERS. By Charles M. Russell
“WILD HORSE HUNTERS,” by Charles M. Russell, a spirited picture of an episode in the rough life of the plains, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Painters of Western Life.”
Monograph Number Two in The Mentor Reading Course
Mr. Russell belongs to no established school of art. His work is distinctly his own, and he is known as the “cowboy artist.” This does not mean, however, that there is anything careless or hasty about his art. He works with great care. His hand is trained to note every detail of his subject, and he has a memory that never lets go. Several years ago Russell had an exhibit in a gallery in New York City which he called “Pictures of the West That Has Passed.”
There was fine audacity in this. The man who had never taken a lesson in an art school and had had very little opportunity to see fine art work, who had no critic more severe than himself, took one of the big galleries in New York City for a “one-man exhibit.” Russell had the courage of his convictions, and his convictions were soon shared by art lovers; for he took his place at once among the best painters of the West.
Charles Russell was born in St. Louis in 1865, and, like Remington, had a deep-seated objection to the rules and routine of schools. The most interesting thing in the school curriculum to Russell was “vacation,” and it was his habit to add to his vacation privileges whenever he could by playing hooky. When he was fifteen he was permitted to leave school and go out to the great wild West, the land of his heart’s desire, and there he began his real education. He was no delinquent in that greater school, nor was he ever truant; for when Nature became his teacher and all outdoors his textbook he showed himself a keen and interested student.
He went to Montana when life on the range was in its glory, and the Indians were part of everyday existence. For eleven years he rode the range by choice, doing night work that he might have daylight for painting and modeling. He was ever possessed by a passion to reproduce in color or in clay the rapidly shifting scenes about him, and so, day after day and year after year, he was laying a splendid foundation for the great work that was before him. He lived among the Indians and came to know their inner life, their hopes and aspirations. He learned their sign language and customs, and so is able to depict Indians as if he were one of them. His great success has come not as a gift of the gods, but as a well earned reward after years of hard and diligent work and close application.
For several years he was known in the East just for book and magazine illustrations, usually in black and white. Then he went to New York and made himself known as a painter.
Mr. Russell spends little time in the East. Naturally he was gratified that his work won for him an immediate and distinguished place; but he was not of the mood nor had he the time to stand in the limelight. The great West was ever beckoning him back, and every summer would find him at some Indian reservation or roaming in the wild regions seeking passionately for the subjects that he loved to paint on canvas or model in clay. Other things interested him little. Russell the man is the same as Russell the schoolboy,—indifferent to books or academic matters, but eager for the things that have a living interest for him. The bargain that he used to propose to his schoolmates sounded the keynote of his life, “You get my lessons for me, and I will make you two Indians.”
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 3. No. 9. SERIAL No. 85
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY CHARLES SCHREYVOGEL
MY BUNKIE. By Charles Schreyvogel
“MY BUNKIE,” by Charles Schreyvogel, a picture that made a great sensation and brought the artist sudden fame, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Painters of Western Life.”
Monograph Number Three in The Mentor Reading Course
“Famous overnight.” In those words Charles Schreyvogel was hailed in 1900. The sound of the words was good and cheery; but Charles Schreyvogel knew well enough that his fame had been much longer than “overnight” in coming. It was only after many vicissitudes and disheartening struggles that he came into the recognition of his colleagues and the general public. When he did win out, however, his victory was so complete and so enduring that he will remain always one of the most distinguished painters of American frontier life.
Charles Schreyvogel was a New York City boy, born in 1861, and was educated in the public schools. He began life apprenticed to a gold-beater, and later on was apprenticed in turn to a die-sinker and lithographer. His pronounced artistic talents could not be denied, and his private studies finally led up to an opportunity to go to Munich, where at the age of twenty-five he studied for three years under Frank Kirschbach and Carl Marr. On his return to America he went west, and there lived for awhile the life of the plains, the mountains, the Indian agencies, and the army barracks. He was fascinated with the wild life of the frontier, and devoted himself eagerly to the study of horses, Indians, and troopers in full action.
Then began the story of “My Bunkie.” While engaged in painting Schreyvogel was in the habit of making sketches for lithographers as a matter of bread winning. Being sadly in need of funds, he offered one of his paintings to a lithographer who needed a subject for a calendar. The painting was “My Bunkie,” and Schreyvogel set great store by it. The lithographer rejected it because it would not cut down well to the dimensions of his calendar. Then the artist tried it out in one place and another, and failing to get it published, he sought permission to hang it in an East Side restaurant in New York, in the hope that someone might become interested in it and buy it for at least a moderate sum. To his utter discouragement he found a short time after that his picture was not even hung in the restaurant.
He was about to take it home and lay it away when a friend induced him to send it to the exhibition of the National Academy of Design which was then approaching. He did this very reluctantly; for he had no hope in it. On the day after the exhibition Schreyvogel rubbed his eyes and read what seemed to him a fairy tale. His picture “My Bunkie” had not only been accepted, but was hung in the place of honor and received the Thomas B. Clarke prize, the most important one that the National Academy has to bestow. And so Schreyvogel became “famous overnight.”
Schreyvogel made his home at Hoboken, New Jersey, and during the years from 1900 until his death he painted and published many vigorous pictures of Indian and army life on the frontier, all of them fine in action and full of sentiment. He made an arrangement with a photographer near his home by which his paintings were issued in fine platinum prints. In this form, as displayed in art-store windows, they have become familiar to the public all over the world.
Schreyvogel died at his home in Hoboken on January 27, 1912, and in the spring exhibition of that year the National Academy of Design, New York, hung once again his celebrated painting of “My Bunkie” in a place of honor as an affectionate memorial to the artist.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 3. No. 9. SERIAL No. 85
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
IN THE NATIONAL ARTS CLUB. NEW YORK CITY
THE CALL OF THE FLUTE. By E. Irving Couse
“THE CALL OF THE FLUTE,” by E. Irving Couse, an idyl of Indian life, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Painters of Western Life.”
Monograph Number Four in The Mentor Reading Course
Scattered here and there throughout the Southwest in unfrequented valleys along the Rio Grande and on almost inaccessible mesa (may´-sah) tops, buried in the sandy and waterless Painted Desert, are found the villages and fields of a people whom the early Spaniards called Pueblos (pooeb´-lo), to distinguish them from their roving neighbors, the plains Indians, who had neither fields nor fixed abode of any kind. These peaceful, home-loving people lived in great houses which they occupied in common—terraced pyramids of sun-dried bricks—and which were both fortress and dwelling.
It is among this interesting tribe of Indians that E. Irving Couse has spent much of his life. He is not a native of the Far West. He was born at Saginaw, Michigan, September 3, 1866, and went to New York for art study in the National Academy of Design. From there he went to Paris, and took a course in art in the Julian Academy and the School of Fine Arts, where his masters were the great French painter Bouguereau, T. Robert Fleury, Ferrier, and others. He returned to America and established his studio in New York City, where he soon made himself known. In the years from 1900 to 1902 he was elected to the American Water Color Society, the New York Water Color Club, and the National Academy of Design.
About this time Mr. Couse’s interest became directed toward the life of the Great Southwest, and he made a trip there which so fascinated him that he continued for years to visit and study the race of the Pueblos. These were most interesting and impressionable years. He found a life new and full of fascination among the Pueblos of Taos (tah´-ose).
Taos is the northernmost of the Pueblos, and consequently became the “buffer state” between the fierce Apaches and the no less warlike plains tribes. Warrior bands from either side, returning from a raid into the other’s country, were sure to fall upon the inoffensive Pueblos of Taos, either to remove the sting of defeat or to increase the glory of victory. As a result the Indians of Taos became the most warlike of the Pueblo tribes, and when the Mokis (mo´-ki) of northern Arizona, long before the coming of the Spaniards under Coronado in 1640, found even their rocky mesa tops to be insufficient protection against the marauding Navajos (nav´-a-ho) and Apaches, it was to Taos they sent for aid. Taos planted a colony on a mesa top near them and called it Tewa (tay´-wah). This colony exists today, and speaks the Taos language, not that of its Moki neighbors.
But for all that the barbaric chant of the happy worker in the cornfields, or at evening the low flute note of the love call springs more easily to his lips than the harsh war cry; for the Taos Indian’s heart is in his fields and his home tucked away in a canyon of the Sangre de Christo (sahn´-gray day kris´-to) Mountains not far from the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico.
Mr. Couse has followed the Indians in their hunts through the mountains they loved so well. He has listened to the call of the flute in some mountain glade or the player’s prayer to the god of the waters beside some rushing stream. He has learned the Pueblos’ ways of thought and action, and has recorded much of it on canvas. Living in such close touch with the Pueblos, gaining and holding their faith and confidence, watching with deep understanding the growth of his models from boyhood to manhood, he has come as close to the spirit of the Indian as white man ever can.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 3. No. 9. SERIAL No. 85
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
FROM THE PAINTING IN THE COLLECTION OF DR WALTER B. JAMES
COURTESY KNOEDLER & CO.
THE SILENCE BROKEN By George De F. Brush
“THE SILENCE BROKEN,” by George de Forest Brush, which pictures the poetry of the primitive Indian nature, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Painters of Western Life.”
Monograph Number Five in The Mentor Reading Course
Mr. Brush is known as a painter of other subjects than those to be found in the Far West. His portraits have great distinction. It is, however, as one of the painters of the Great West that he is considered here, and in that field of art he ranks among the very first.
He was born at Shelbyville, Tennessee, in September, 1855. He studied in Paris, and was a pupil of the great Gérôme. Some say that his work shows the influence of his master, especially in the trim finish of his technic and in his fondness for embodying a story in his pictures. Unlike Gérôme, however, Brush did not search the classics nor the life of the Far East for subjects. We find no Roman chariot races nor scenes from Scripture on his canvases. His thoughts were always of his country, and he found his material in the North American Indians. In doing so he took a position among painters of western life that is peculiarly his own.
Mr. Brush is a thoughtful student, with a fine, poetic imagination. Interest drew him to the Indians. His desire was to discover “in their present condition a clue to their past.” As one appreciative critic has put it, “he attempted to recreate the spacious, empty world in which they lived a life that was truly primitive, unmixed with any alloy of the white man’s bringing; and to interpret not only the externals of their life, but its inwardness, as with mingled stolidity and simplicity these men-children looked out upon the phenomena of nature, fronted the mystery of death, and peered into the stirrings of their own souls.”
Take the very picture that accompanies this description, “The Silence Broken,” for example. A swan has burst from a bank of foliage immediately above the head of an Indian in a canoe. We are conscious of the rush of sound, vibrating through the vast isolation. The Indian looks up, but does not cease his paddling. He kneels in the boat, “a figure of monumental composure.” It is in pictures like this that Brush conveys in eloquent terms on canvas an impression of the solemn romance of those primitive human creatures.
Mr. Brush has his studio in New York City, and usually spends his summer in New Hampshire. His work will receive attention again in The Mentor when the portrait painters of America are considered.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 3. No. 9. SERIAL No. 85
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
COPYRIGHT, 1912
COURTESY THE SNEDECOR GALLERIES, N. Y.
AN ARGUMENT WITH THE SHERIFF. By W. R. Leigh
“AN ARGUMENT WITH THE SHERIFF,” by W. R. Leigh, a mortal encounter between a sheriff and horse thieves, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Painters of Western Life.”
Monograph Number Six in The Mentor Reading Course
As the Irish would say, the best way to tell about a man is to let him tell about himself. Mr. Leigh, who was born in West Virginia in 1866, has been well known for years as a magazine and book illustrator, and has lately come into a new renown as a painter of great western pictures. He tells his own story in a very simple, straightforward way:
“On my father’s plantation my earliest recollections,” he says, “are of drawing animals on slate or cutting them out of paper. For one of the latter I was awarded a prize of a dollar at a county fair, when four or five years old. I began drawing from nature at ten, and at twelve was awarded $100 by the great art collector, Mr. Corcoran, of Washington, after he had seen a drawing I had made of a dog. At fourteen I went to Baltimore and studied in the Maryland Institute for three years. I got first awards each year in the school, and in the winter of the third year was appointed teacher of drawing in the night school. At this time Mr. Corcoran gave me another $100.
“At seventeen I went to Munich, Bavaria, and worked one year under Professor Rouffe in the antique class, then two years under Professor Gyses in the nature class, and one year in what was called the ‘painting school,’ gaining three bronze medals altogether.
“At this time I was forced to go back to America and start to make my living. I spent a year in Baltimore, and saved up $300, with which I returned to Munich and the ‘painting school.’ In the middle of the winter when my funds were exhausted I went out looking for employment. It was not to be had for months; but during the following spring I was engaged by an artist to help him with some mural pictures. He did me out of almost everything I had, and left me destitute and in debt.
“However, sometime after this I got work with Philip Fleisch to help him on a cyclorama which represented the Battle of Waterloo. Fleisch found me useful enough to advance me sufficient money to get through the year so that I might help him the following season on another cyclorama. I entered the composition school of the Academy, painted a picture which gained me a silver medal, the highest award in the Academy, and an honorable mention in the Paris Salon. I sold that picture for $1,000, and it is now in Denver, Colorado. Five more years were occupied in painting five more cycloramas and some pictures in between, one of which gained me a second silver medal from the Academy.
“Overwork had by this time got me into bad health, and I returned to New York, where I soon recovered. I worked for several years in New York, painting many portraits, two of which hang in Washington Lee University, also many pictures both landscape and figure, and a great deal of magazine and book illustrating. Latterly I have turned my attention to the Far West in response to a desire that has been in me since boyhood.”
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 3. No. 9. SERIAL No. 85
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
By ARTHUR HOEBER
Author and Artist
Copyright by E. Irving Couse
THE DRUMMER, by E. Irving Couse
MENTOR GRAVURES
THE MENTOR · DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS · JUNE 15, 1915
Entered at the Post-office at New York, N. Y., as second-class matter. Copyright, 1915, by The Mentor Association, Inc.
The present generation has taken its pictures of life in the Far West mainly through the paintings of such artists as Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, Charles Schreyvogel, and others who will be referred to in this article. And yet two of these men—Remington and Schreyvogel—who were our contemporaries are already dead, and it was only about eighty-four years ago that the first American artists went to the land of the setting sun to paint the Indian in his native lair. This artist was a young Philadelphian named George Catlin, a lawyer by profession, who was born in 1796 and died in 1872. Though trained for the bar, his artistic tendencies were too strong for him. He set forth in 1830, with practically no knowledge of the technic of art, going as a guest of Governor Clark of St. Louis, then United States superintendent of Indian affairs. Governor Clark went for the purpose of arranging treaties with the Winnebagos, Menominees, Shawanos, Foxes, and others, and the opportunities for young Catlin were unusual.
ONE OF CATLIN’S INDIANS
A second trip the next season inspired Catlin to still a third, in 1832, when he ascended the Missouri on a steamer, to the mouth of the Yellowstone. He returned some two thousand miles in a canoe with a companion, and on the trip sketches were made of the Crows, Blackfeet, Sioux, and Iowas. It was all a revelation to Catlin, who made a serious study of the savage as far as his artistic equipment permitted. Subsequent trips followed, and in 1836 he accompanied a detachment of the first regiment of Mounted Dragoons to the Comanches and other tribes. These visits of course were at a time when the Indians were in a primitive and picturesque condition, before the change that was to come subsequently through association with the whites. The result was an enormous collection of drawings and paintings, together with many written accounts and descriptions of manners and customs, and for years Catlin reigned supreme in a field that no one had hitherto explored.
Catlin, however, was far more interesting from a historical standpoint than from any artistic conception he gave to his theme. With his indifferent training, unfortunately, he lacked imagination. He recorded what he saw, then a great novelty to the public; but his work now arouses little emotion. For years, however, engravings of his drawings, colored reproductions, and photographs were the only data for reference, and as the artist was scrupulously correct in all details of adornment, local color, costume and implements, manner of life and ceremonials, his work still has considerable value. The modern men do not by any means scorn taking a hint from him. In the Centennial Exhibition in 1876, a great showing of Catlin’s work was more or less in the nature of a sensation.
The next painter of the West was William de la M. Cary, who in 1861 made a trip across the plains with an army officer. There was still plenty of excitement, and the traveler had to be prepared against both wild man and beast. Mr. Cary made many sketches in the manner of Catlin, and sent home illustrations to the magazines, occasionally recording the humorous side of his adventures. His sketches were well received and appreciated.
Some years ago George de Forest Brush gave considerable attention to the life of the Indian, and signed many pictures that remain classics in American art. Some of the themes were of the early Aztecs. Among the titles were “The Sculptor and the King” and “Aztec Sculptor.” More modern works were “The Silence Broken,” “Mourning Her Brave,” “Indian Hunter,” and many more, all of them works of fine imagination and admirable composition lines. Mr. Brush, who was born in Tennessee in 1855, was a pupil of the Paris government art school under the late J. L. Gérôme (zhay-romé), and is a distinguished draftsman as he is a commanding figure in American art. Of recent years, however, he has chosen other fields in which to exploit his talent; but of all the native painters, he has brought to his work on the Indian the best artistic equipment of any, and of the dozen subjects of the aborigines all are unusual, and of the highest excellence.
Copyright by W. de la M. Cary
“FORTY-NINERS” CROSSING THE PLAINS
By William de la M. Cary
The painters of the Great West, however, were yet to come. Men were to arrive who would catch something of the spirit of the life there, who were to record the romance of the savage, the soldier, the cowboy; the latter in particular,—a picturesque group of men the outcome of peculiar conditions, men who rounded up the cattle, and were apparently a race apart, of prodigious recklessness, hardihood, and bravery, who lived in the saddle almost continuously, save when occasionally they strayed into the frontier town to squander their pay. These were, as the late Frederic Remington quaintly phrased it, “Men with the bark on.” Remington (1861-1909) was himself to be the first of the modern group to treat the West with artistic sympathy, and his name rises instantly when any mention is made of the plains. First of all, the man himself was a genuine lover of the open, of nature in its wildest aspects. For him the horse, the prairie, the blue sky! He should have been an army officer. He was, almost; for he accompanied the troops on many of their campaigns and was as well known to the captains as he was to the troopers and many of the Indians.
Photo by Davis & Sanford
FREDERIC REMINGTON
Somewhere about the middle ’80’s he began to send illustrations to the various periodicals; crude affairs, as he admitted later and himself characterized as “half-baked.” But they had that vital, convincing touch to them that meant subsequent success. Somehow, even in his tentative efforts, he had a vim and go that held the spectator. The man knew his Indian, soldier, cowboy, hunter, from the ground up. They had in them plenty of red blood, even though the first drawings were crude. There was that about them which disclosed astonishing feeling, clear insight into character, distinct sympathy. The public was profoundly interested, and saw great promise. Nor was there any disappointment; for the man made rapid progress. His Indian fairly reeked of savagery; his soldier was an epitome of the hard-working, modest, simple, splendid man of action; his cowboy was a picturesque and vital character.
It is almost pathetic to realize that so commonplace and commercial an invention as a wire fence was the means of doing away with the cowboy. This introduction of a cheap and effective means of coralling the animals at one fell swoop put the cowboy out of business, destroyed forever the usefulness of this race of picturesque, hard-riding, reckless youth of the plains. Mr. Cowboy rides on his raids but seldom now.
Remington knew these cowboys well. He had mingled with them, ridden after the herds, joined in their boisterous revels, and there came from his brush and pencil a picturesque lot of out-of-door characters, to the very life. Remington had camped in the open, had ridden hard and long, had been with the United States cavalry in its expeditions, was the intimate of the officers and men of the then little army of this nation, and he saw history made. In all this crowd there was no more picturesque figure, whether cowboy, Indian, or soldier, than Remington himself. He wrote as entertainingly as he painted, and before his death (he was stricken untimely) was to follow his beloved comrades in the army as war correspondent to Cuba, in the Spanish War. It is nowise to the disparagement of the men who followed Remington to say that they were all under an everlasting debt of gratitude to him for his initial insight into the breezy outlook on life in the Far West, and for his way of presenting his facts.
Remington was an indefatigable worker, constantly filling his sketch-book with notes, and making mental memoranda of the happenings about him. And he showed steady progress in the technic of his art, each succeeding picture disclosing genuine advance. Nor was he content simply with painting and drawing. He sought artistic expression in sculpture too, modeling much during the later years of his life with great success. Personally, the man was a delight to a host of friends, with his inimitable stories, his genial manner, and his thorough naturalness. One of the best known of his sculptural works is “The Broncho Buster,” which has long been a public favorite, and been reproduced in bronze.
Copyright by C. M. Russell
A DANGEROUS CRIPPLE
By Charles M. Russell
There followed Remington an artist very distinctive of the soil, one who was of the land in that he had been a veritable cowboy, knew his West thoroughly, had lived with the Indians, spoke several of the tribal languages, and, still more useful accomplishment, was familiar with that picturesque, poetic, universal means of communication among savages of the Great West, the sign language. This was Charles M. Russell (1865). In Great Falls, Montana, where he lives and has a home and studio, he is one of the institutions. Few travelers in that part of this country fail to pay him a visit. They call him the “Cowboy Painter,” and with reason; for during several years he followed that profession. Also he lived long among the Indians, sharing their camps, their food, riding after game, winter and summer, dwelling with them as a brother.
CHARLES M. RUSSELL
The Cowboy Artist
Though he always drew pictures, he never saw the inside of an art school, nor had he ever a teacher. Artistically, like Topsy, he just grew. He cannot recollect the time when a lead pencil did not seem part of his equipment, and he filled sketchbooks with notes. Somewhere about 1892 he concluded to take up seriously the profession of artist, and turned his attention to illustrative work. Among his efforts in this direction were drawings for Stewart Edward White’s delightful “Arizona Nights,” Emerson Hough’s “Story of the Outlaw,” and Wheeler’s “Trail of Lewis and Clark.”
Russell went from St. Louis, his birthplace, to Montana when he was but a lad, so that he learned much of woodcraft and the ways of the plainsman. Today there are few who excel him in throwing the lariat; he is an adept with the pistol; horses are second nature to him; buffaloes he hunted and killed by the hundred in earlier days. So it will be seen that when Mr. Russell started in to paint the West he was reasonably well equipped and rendered whereof he knew.
Since some years now stern men in blue and khaki have seen to it that the Indian is kept on his reservation; business men with the wire fences now look after the interests of investors in ranch property; life in the West has lost much of its picturesqueness; civilization and order control affairs. But Russell’s memory of all these earlier conditions remains. So distinctly were his first illustrations of the soil that they attracted the attention of some of the English weeklies, which made arrangements for his work. From this to painting was an easy transition. No one was more surprised at his sudden success than the artist himself, who had drawn these pictures because of his great love of the work and to whom financial gain was the last consideration.
So it came about that Mr. Russell turned his attention to compositions of various sorts,—the lassoing of cattle, the intimate glimpses of Indian life, the ways of the cowboys, and occasionally episodes of army life. They were all true transcripts, painted with considerable sympathy and enthusiasm. Many of his pictures found favor in England, titled people of that nation hunting in the West regarding these canvases not only entertaining but as remarkably faithful. He has been spoken of as the painter of the “West that has Passed.” Like Remington, Mr. Russell has attempted with no little success the task of representing by sculpture some of the Indians and animals of the plains.
CHARLES SCHREYVOGEL
During the exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York in 1900 a young painter awoke one fine morning to find himself famous. He was a youth of German extraction by the name of Charles Schreyvogel (1861-1912), and his painting, “My Bunkie,” was the sensation of the display. It was an episode of the United States army campaign against the Indians, a cavalryman rescuing his chum, whom he had drawn up on his horse. Another painter of western life had appeared, and had made astonishingly good. Schreyvogel followed this picture with many more of no less excellence. He painted the life of the plains,—the Indian hunting the buffalo, attacking settlers, at his war dance, the fighting of the American trooper,—in short, he disclosed a fine pictorial insight in that wild and stirring life that has now practically passed away.
Copyright, 1900, by Charles Schreyvogel.
A HOT TRAIL
By Charles Schreyvogel
Trained in the Paris schools, E. Irving Couse (1866-), after doing some decorative work, devoted his attention entirely to painting the Indians of the Southwest, depicting rather the intimate life out of doors, or at the peaceful occupation of weaving, hunting, and other distractions. He gives these canvases a decorative treatment, and they disclose an intimate knowledge of his subject. Mr. Couse has a studio at Taos, New Mexico, and is represented in many public collections throughout the country. Besides he has had many medals and honors.
Another artist to paint the same sort of subject with distinguished success is Ernest L. Blumenschein (1874-), who began as an illustrator, and after work at portraiture became interested in the life of the Indian. He too went some years ago to Taos, where quite a colony of painters assembled. His first important picture to attract attention was his “Wiseman, Warrior, and Youth,” a group of three characteristic red men. Both Mr. Couse and Mr. Blumenschein may be said to represent the “tame” Indian; for all their canvases depict the savages at peaceful occupations.
W. Herbert Dunton is still another of the Taos colony, where he paints much of the year; though he gives attention to illustrative work as well. He has seized upon the characteristics of the Indian with artistic fidelity.
E. IRVING COUSE
In His Studio
In a similar manner N. C. Wyeth, both in painting and in illustrative work, has been no less successful. Mr. Wyeth was a pupil of the late Howard Pyle, whose influence is felt strongly in his work.
Other pupils of that noted illustrator have attained distinctive positions in portraying varied forms of Western life. The legends and traditions of the Indian have attracted Remington Schuyler. The pictorial aspect of his active life in the open, together with his contact with wild animal life, has supplied subjects for Philip Goodwin; while the life of the frontiersman and the pioneer has inspired the sturdy work of Allen True and Harvey Dunn. These five men have pictured the West in the same large spirit in which their master worked in rendering the buccaneers of the sea and the continental soldier. Most of the painters of the West have been illustrators first and painters later.
At Cody, Wyoming, for a large part of the year lives William R. Leigh. He was born in West Virginia in 1866. He was a pupil of the Munich art schools, and received medals in Paris. He has painted much of the West that has passed,—of Indian and soldier, of settler and cowboy, of some of the battles of the ’60’s between the United States troops and the savages,—and has given some of the wonderful landscape backgrounds, devoting no less attention to the extraordinary local color than to the figure.
THE HOUSE OF E. IRVING COUSE
At Taos, New Mexico
Edward W. Deming, who has both painted and modeled the Indian, executed some years ago a large decoration for the home of Mrs. E. H. Harriman, at Arden, New York, with the title “The Hunt,” showing the red men after big game. Similarly Maynard Dixon has executed decorative work of the Indian for some California homes. His training was through several years of illustrative work for the magazines, and in this work he always had a distinctly decorative composition of his subject, though his rendering was realistic and virile.
WISEMAN, WARRIOR, YOUTH
By E. L. Blumenschein
Howard McCormack, who studied the Southwest as far as Mexico, has also given attention to decorative work with the Indian for his theme. Another who began as illustrator is J. N. Marchand, who now paints the story-telling picture of the prospector and the cowboy. He knows well his types and the color of their setting. The name of De Cost Smith is frequently signed to strong Indian pictures. His “Defiance,” a group of Indian warriors on the crest of a hill, shown a dozen years ago, had great vitality and beauty. Louis Aitken was one who had much of that vitality and beauty—but he passed away too early for great fame. Another who is now known in mural work, W. de Leftwith Dodge, began his career in Paris by showing in the Salon the “Death of Minnehaha” and “Burial of a Brave,” subjects novel to that old art center. In recent water color exhibitions still another illustrator, Frank Tenney Johnson, has had many distinguished showings of the present day Indian. His oil paintings, too, are full of the poetry of the open. Moonlight and sun-glare are to him equally alluring. Two painters who glory in showing vast sketches of the open, who use the human figure, but minimize it in their pictures, are Frank Vincent Du Mond and Fernand Lungren, both permanent residents of the Southwest.
E. L. BLUMENSCHEIN
All painters of the West regard that country and its life with a deep reverence, and this feeling shows in their work. “God’s Country,” though the familiar phrase of all, expresses their enthusiasm and their devotion. In subject it is the most distinctly American of all themes, and enthusiasm for the theme will go on producing the technical skill to render it adequately.
Some of these later men bring to their work a technical skill perhaps not possessed by the earlier men. Yet with this they lack some of the convincing quality of the pioneers. For remaining traces of the picturesque the painter of today goes to New Mexico, where he finds even more color than farther north; but there he has to portray the arts of peace rather than those of war. Who shall say his theme is no less satisfactory and inspiring? Certainly not we who have lived to see the art of combat brought up to the nth power!
Copyright, The Knapp Company, N. Y.
CUSTER’S LAST STAND
By W. H. Dunton
W. H. DUNTON
The Painter of the Plains at Work
There is still infinite opportunity to make the subject of the Indian an important factor in American art. His decorative costume gives an element of color, while his life of action gives rhythm and movement, and the background of prairie and mountain provides dignity and grandeur for the composition. In but little of the mural work has this opportunity been used, though some of the decoration of state capitols has included isolated instances—Douglas Volk in the Minnesota capitol being one. Lawrence C. Earle has decorated a bank building with scenes of pioneer days. Ralph Blakelock, one of the most individual of painters, in his best period pictured the Indian. Elbridge A. Burbank has made many paintings of types and representatives of various tribes—since 1897 over 125 portraits. H. F. Farny, who did fine illustrative work in the ’80’s, has been one of the most prolific painters of the Indian subject. Two of his best are “The Silent Guest” and “Renegade Apaches.” Joseph Henry Sharp has also been a tremendous producer of the western life picture. He has painted nearly one hundred portraits of Indians and Indian pictures for the University of California and eleven Indian portraits for the Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
Sculptors have made ample use of the Indian as a subject. His muscular development, as well as his stoicism, is a monumental quality akin to certain aspects in the Egyptians.
Copyright, 1914 Courtesy Snedecor & Co.
THE ROPING
By W. R. Leigh
All of these books are descriptions and stories of life in the Great West as Remington saw it. They are all illustrated by the artist and author.
BUFFALO HUNT. By George Catlin
In the art of “The Painters of Western Life,” the artist himself plays an important part. Remington, Schreyvogel, Russell, and the rest were explorers and discoverers. Someone has said that Remington was essentially a reporter, that he never became a “painter’s painter,” but that he was the people’s favorite through the subjects he chose. The phrase, “art for art’s sake,” fades into the background as these vivid pictures of life in the Great West blaze out on the canvas. Every stroke of the brushes of these men shows that they lived and did things, and that they were more concerned about reporting results than about methods.
Some of the earlier attempts to picture the West are crude, and scarcely to be classed as art. The name of Catlin is not even mentioned in two of the leading standard works on American painting. He was not a professional artist: he was a lawyer, and he set out to explore the West and to report on the conditions that he found there. His pictures, therefore, though not reckoned with as art productions, are most valuable records. The accompanying illustration, showing an Indian buffalo hunt, is an example. The scene itself is now a part of past history. We don’t hunt buffaloes any more: we collect them, and we regard ourselves as very fortunate today in possessing herds of buffalo gathered and fostered by the public spirited liberality of Mr. William C. Whitney and Mr. Austin Corbin.
Catlin was followed into the West by men who knew much more about art than he; but the object they all sought was the same. Each one of them had stories to tell of the Redman and his life and habits, of the fights and friendships of cavalrymen, of the adventures of cowboys, and in their pictures these subjects were more to them than the purely artistic qualities displayed in their representation. There is, of course, much to admire in their art. Their execution is vigorous, direct and sure. But the historical value of their paintings makes fully as strong an appeal to us as their art interest.
The eminent art critic, Samuel Isham, characterized Remington as an illustrator rather than a painter. “The authoritative chronicler,” he said, “of the whole western land, from Assiniboine to Mexico, and of all men and beasts dwelling therein, is Frederic Remington. He, at least, cannot be said to have sacrificed truth to grace. The raw, crude light, the burning sand, the pitiless blue sky, surround the lank, sunburned men who ride the rough horses, and fight, or drink, or herd cattle, as the case may be.” Mr. Isham points out that the work of these men might actually lose something of their force if their pictures were completer and more finished. Their paintings are bold, brilliant records, and their assembled works might well be classed under the title that Russell gave to his own collection: “Pictures of a West That Has Passed.”
W. D. Moffat
Editor
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