Folder 492

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EXHIBITION OF WESTERN PAINTINGS BY W. R. LEIGH

On Tuesday, January 11, the Grand Central Art Galleries, 15 Vanderbilt Avenue, will open a large one-man show of recent works by William R. Leigh, who is the one living member of that trio of great American artists — the other two being of course Remington and Charles Russell — who have achieved fame as delineators of the picturesque scenes and characters of the country of cowboys and Indians, prospectors, bad men, cattle rustlers, buffaloes, mountains and canyons, mesas and plains. Thirty-five canvases compose the exhibition, COWBOYS AND INDIANS, Paintings of the Old West [previous 5 words are underlined] on view January 11-29. Many of these have been painted within the past year. The four big pictures of the exhibition, all 6 1/2 x 10 1/2 feet are:

Navaho [sic] Fire Dance [underlined], a sensational canvas showing in the glare of a huge fire of tree trunks a circle of Indian dancers smeared with white clay to resemble ghosts. Attending the climax of this Fire Dance was one of Mr. Leigh’s most unusual experiences. Oc-curring in mid-winter, seventy-five miles from Gallup, New Mexico, on the Navaho [sic] Reservation, he sat for hours in the snow, at four below zero, watching the naked, painted Indians dancing in a huge circle around the fire. Few outsiders are ever admitted to this four-day healing ceremonial, and so far as is known this is the only painting ever made of the dance.

Westward Ho! [underlined], a covered-wagon train attacked by Indians.

Pocahontas [underlined], the climactic moment from one of the most thrilling episodes of American history, when the Indian princess prevented the execution of Captain John Smith, the founder of Virginia. Pocahontas afterwards married John Rolfe, an ancestor of Leigh’s.

Visions of Yesterday [underlined], an old Indian at a plow pauses for a moment to contemplate a bison skull; a vision of the past, revealing itself in the clouds of the horizon, shows him young once more and astride his pony, hunting bison.

William Robinson Leigh was born in Berkeley County, W. Va. His early educa-tion was under private tutors; he began the study of art at the Maryland Institute, Baltimore, under Hugh Newell. He continued his studies in Munich, Bavaria, at the Royal Academy, where medals were awarded him annually. In his twelve years abroad, he was figure painter on six cycloramas; one, the Crucifixion of Christ, is still on exhibit at the shrine of Einsiedel in Switzerland. Returning to the United States in 1896, he became known as an illustrator for leading magazines and publishing companies — Scribner’s, McClure’s, Century, Collier’s and Harper’s. In 1906 he visited the Southwest for the study of Indians, cowboys and animals, and has devote the past quarter century to painting chiefly in Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. He has had many adventures, living with cowboys, horse-thieves, wranglers, Indians, and has slept in teepees, tents, on the desert, in ghost-town shanties, Wild West hotels, adobe houses. Leigh is author and illus-trator of two books, “The Western Pony,” and “Frontiers of Enchantment,” and his paintings are in many museums, and in well-known private collections and galleries.