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.