Folder 492

[single page typed]

1953 or 54 [noted in pencil at top of page]

Publicity: Helen Shelley 1680 Broadway (5th Floor) New York 19. CO. 5-2077 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEWS about Retrospective Painting Exhibition - 1906-1954 of W. R. LEIGH Washington County Museum of Fine Arts Hagerstown, Md., Feb.28 - March 31, inclusive

Never can it be said that William Robinson LEIGH, A.N.A., is unhonored and unsung, for not only do museums in this country pride themselves on examples of his work but abroad kings and princes own and cherish his paintings. Today’s third and only living member of that famous triumvirate of “Western” painters, Remington, Russell and Leigh - his work is sought for by collectors.

Commencing Sunday, February 28, and continuing through the entire month of March, Leigh, by popular request, will hold at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, his third and largest exhibition, in the South, of his exciting Western paintings. Many of those previously shown in Maryland are now the property of museums and art collectors.

The exhibition will consist of over fifty (50) paintings; the collection includes nearly half a century of the artists’s work - the entire group depicting every facet of the old, lively Wild West days, right up to today…bronco busting, cattle rustling, wild horse ropings and Indian fights.

There will be three (3) mural-size paintings, “Buffalo Hunt,” “King of Canyons,” and “The Master Hand,” described as “Like a bolt of lightning…the wily equine flies into the air with a volcanic suddenness, with a fantastic violence and rabid spleen that defy description.”

Every artist has his own favorite composition and “The Master Hand” is Leigh’s - not only because he feels that the painting represents him at his painting best, but because he feels he has caught the supreme rope artistry of the American Indian of the old days, for successive generations of Americans to see and marvel at. Americana-loving Leigh feels so strongly about this that he hopes to see “The Master Hand” enshrined in a national art gallery “somewhere in this United States” - preferably in our nation’s capital.

Amazing as it may seem, there will be six canvases painted within the year by Leigh and never exhibited by him before - ANYWHERE. “A Busted Bull Buster,” “A Hellbent Hombre,” “The Rampage,” “Dripping Spring,” “Navaho Pal,” and “Nip and Tuck”; and in deference to today’s growing interest in how [underlined] each individual artist paints, “Zuni Belle” will be included - a charcoal study that shows artist-Leigh’s method and draftsman’s ability before he applies the paint.

Another painting new to Maryland and the South will be the “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” the picture that created much interest in a recent showing in New York.

Definitely tying in with Leigh’s native South’s growing interest in him, it should be noted that among the artist’s recent honors was the presentation on January 11, 1954, by the Hon. Theodore R. McKeldin, Governor of the State of Maryland, of the new Alumni Honor Medal, to commemorate the 128th Anniversary of the chartering of the Maryland Institute by the Maryland legislature. In his presentation speech, the Governor said, “Mr Leigh has advanced to the top ranks in the world of art. He came to Baltimore in 1880 to study at the Maryland Institute, the second oldest art school in America, and he has never failed to give credit for much of his success to Maryland Institute.”

Leigh, now 87, is a born Southerner - his father from Richmond, his mother from Berkeley County, West Virginia - so both states can claim him; now a transplanted New Yorker - the Grand Central Art Galleries of that city have his work on display. Leigh since earliest childhood has been not only a lover of the south but of the old West, making visits from away back - 30 trips - to Arizona and New Mexico, over the years cementing that love and earning him the title, “America’s Sagebrush Rembrandt,” conferred on him by Collier’s Magazine. Says Leigh, “Never in the whole of human history at any time or anywhere has there ever been a terrain more suitable for the making of pictures and telling of stories than our own West.”