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NEWS GRAND CENTRAL ART GALLERIES 15 VANDERBILT AVENUE, NEW YORK 17, N. Y. Telephone: MUrray Hill 6-4737

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Photos on Request Helen Shelley, Publicity CO 5-2077 EIGHT DECADES IN REVIEW (Paintings from 1872 to 1955 by William R. Leigh, A. N. A.)

On Tuesday, January 11, thru January 29, the Grand Central Art Galleries of which he is a member again make it possible for the immense public of William R. Leigh to pass in review on his paintings and sketches done when he was a little boy of 6 in post Civil War days right up to octogenarian Leigh, now living in the Atomic Age. Many of them will be new pictures to delight his “fans,” others will be old favorites on which his reputation was made.

Today when Americanism in the best sense is held as a beacon to other less for-tunate nations, Leigh’s present show is like turning back the pages of America’s glorious history and having it come to life vitally and brilliantly in paint.

After his youthful studies at Maryland Institute, like the majority of American painters, Leigh had training in Europe - Munich was his early alma mater - but, even in Germany, Leigh looked back nostalgically and painted boyish interpretation of the West in those early days. “The Gamblers,” painted in Europe before he had ever been West, received the acclaim of his instructor in Munich, Professor Von Lindenschmit, who said on seeing this picture: “You possess the dramatic sense; your field is in Western America.” This picture, together with “The Murderer,” got him his first as-signment with Scribner’s and Collier’s. Work for these and other magazines provided him a living and afterwards launched him on his desired career. Both pictures, now shown for the first time, depict his love of drama even in his twenties.

Later, his dream of the West materialized in 30 add trips to Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming, where he painted in oils and water colors for which he is now famous, and for which Collier’s in 1951 called him America’s “Sagebrush Rembrandt.” In between there was time out for two trips with the Carl Akeley and Carlisle-Clark expeditions to Africa for the American Museum of Natural History. Some of the vivid sketches done on safari will be included in the present show, as well as a large oil painting, “An African Episode,” a favorite with many of his admirers.

Although Leigh is noted for his Indian and cowboy pictures, hundreds painted on the spot and many imaginative, there were periods when he fell under the spell of America’s breathtaking landscapes; gorgeous Western sunrises and sunsets and the un-believably spectacular Grand Canyon that he has painted in so many aspects. These and some never-before-shown West Virginia and New England landscapes revealing him in a milder mood point up the versatility of this distinguished artist.

Animals run like a motif through hundreds of Leigh pictures, and Dr. Edward M. Weyer, Jr., Editor of Natural History Magazine, says of one of Leigh’s mural-size pictures depicting buffalos [sic], “It is one of the very remarkable animal paintings of all time.” It is a far cry from this painting to Leigh’s drawing of animals done at the age of 6 on the West Virginia plantation where he was born, but the love and understanding of animals was there; also the sure hand of the artist to be.

Highlighted in the present exhibition is Leigh’s “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” one of the artist’s historical Americana pictures. This painting paid tribute to the event by being presented alongside the Old North Church weather vane when it was exhibited at the Grand Central Station in November last. Other of Leigh’s love affairs with American history will be the early charcoal preparatory sketches of “The Deerfield Massacre,” and “The Buffalo Drive.” Two of Leigh’s most powerful mural-size paintings, “The Master Hand” and “Buffalo Hunt,” interpreting the early days of the West, will also be displayed.

It is all here, a running commentary of over 60 pictures on American history, and it can be truly said that it is rarely vouchsafed a painter to live out a dream as has William R. Leigh - 88 years young. His pictures are now in the Woolaroc Museum in Oklahoma, the Heckscher Foundation, the Huntington Museum, the Thomas Gilcrease Museum, and the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming, the Newark Museum, the American Museum of Natural History and the International Business Machines Collection. Leigh is also one of the founders of the Allied Artists of America. Among his other recent honors is a Swiss citation awarded for the Einsiedeln Cyclorama of the Crucifixion painted in 1893.