Folder 492

[single page typed document on blue paper]

BUFFALO HUNT a painting by W. R. Leigh

The first impression produced by this painting is of tumult — of tremendous noise and heat and angry flow of weight. One is immediately convinced that a buffalo hunt looked like this, for Mr. Leigh’s command of realistic depiction is complete. The sweating, savage Indians, the wildly struggling herd become at once part of one’s personal experience. In its absolute depiction of howling fact, it is a very stirring experience. It is arresting in that it is purely an animal painting — the Indians are only more ingenious animals than the bison, the landscape is quite properly subservient to the fierce drama presented.

The very fine composition of the canvas is worthy of the theme: a simple diagonal through which the massive bison move from dusty nothing, spreading into the foreground, and suddenly disappearing; this almost interrupted by the flame-like deep arroyo. The left, from which, in the background, the flow starts is bordered by menacing, jagged forms of Indians and dust clouds. Very considerable space (10 1/2‘ X 6 1/2’) is kept interesting while always contributory to the major interest. One sees flow of forms, determination and desperation, textures of fur and hide and stone, animal heat and strife in the midst of arid landscape.

An interesting point in the “realism-in-painting-has-been-replaced-by-the-camera” argument comes up here. For this picture could never have been made by a camera, though it is almost final in its realism. Granted such a thing as truthful color-film (which does not exist) — granted that the limitless finances of Hollywood could recreate this scene (which they could not) — the greatest cameraman, with all the resources of Hollywood and Rochester behind him, aided by Wildlife and Conservation Commissions and Indian Chiefs and all sorts of other people, could not get into a camera what the experience, observations (in the Sherlockian sense), talent and, above all, imagination of one man has got into this canvas. The Indians, bison, rocky landscape are intimately felt and intimately conveyed to you in this dramatic moment, by means not elsewhere available. This is a document built upon one man’s experience and sympathies. It is of great artistic interest and also of great dramatic and historic interest. The values of Leigh’s paintings are in relation to the total of American culture, not to a fragment of it.

Dr. Edward M. Weyer, Jr., Editor of Natural History Magazine, says of a Leigh mural-size picture depicting buffalo, “It is one of the very remarkable animal paintings of all time.”