WILLIAM R. LEIGH

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.

PAINTERS of WESTERN LIFE

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.