PAINTERS OF PLAIN AND FOREST

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!

CUSTER’S LAST STAND

By W. H. Dunton

W. H. DUNTON

The Painter of the Plains at Work