.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Working on a commission to paint the Grand Canyon for the Santa Fe Railroad, William Robinson Leigh made his first trip to the West in 1906 and spent the subsequent three summers working in New Mexico. With great interest and keen observation, Leigh gained an authoritative knowledge and understanding of the local cultures which became the prominent feature of his many genre pictures. In 1910, an invitation to record a hunting trip in Cody, Wyoming led Leigh to spend the following three summers executing hundreds of sketches of the Yellowstone region. The artist’s copious preliminary drawings of the local formations resulted in magnificent canvases such as the present work, View of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Capturing the majestic beauty of the legendary Lower Falls, View of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone uniquely blends the artist’s experimentation with Impressionist technique and his skillful ability in recording one of the marquee vistas of the American West.
Nicknamed “America’s Sagebrush Rembrandt,” Leigh paints the present work with crisp desert tones complemented by brilliant blues of the sky and the rushing water of the river below. Although experimenting with a looser brush in the studio, the artist took painstaking efforts to record his surroundings with precision during his travels to the West. One contemporary observer noted that during his Wyoming travels, “Leigh developed his pictures and made numerous visits to the spot before he put the painting in its present form. He measured distances and counted trees and lived over again many times the whole encounter in order to give every detail as it had actually been.” (as quoted in D. Duane Cummins, William Robinson Leigh: Western Artist, Norman, Oklahoma, 1980, p. 92)
With his combination of transportive detail and artistic flourish, William Robinson Leigh’s paintings depicting Yellowstone National Park rank among some of his most compelling images of the American West. His work also notably builds on the tradition of Thomas Moran, who first ventured to the area in 1871 and whose celebrated paintings, watercolors and sketches of the region were instrumental in the area’s establishment as the nation’s first national park. Leigh’s extraordinary Western paintings can also be seen as a personal dream fulfilled; as the artist explained, “I have always felt that the West was the place for me. Even in Europe (as a student), I had this in my mind as my objective, and consistently worked and planned to the end that I might go there and paint.” (as quoted in P.H. Hassrick, 100 Years of Western Art from Pittsburgh Collections, exhibition catalogue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1982, p. 18)
Nicknamed “America’s Sagebrush Rembrandt,” Leigh paints the present work with crisp desert tones complemented by brilliant blues of the sky and the rushing water of the river below. Although experimenting with a looser brush in the studio, the artist took painstaking efforts to record his surroundings with precision during his travels to the West. One contemporary observer noted that during his Wyoming travels, “Leigh developed his pictures and made numerous visits to the spot before he put the painting in its present form. He measured distances and counted trees and lived over again many times the whole encounter in order to give every detail as it had actually been.” (as quoted in D. Duane Cummins, William Robinson Leigh: Western Artist, Norman, Oklahoma, 1980, p. 92)
With his combination of transportive detail and artistic flourish, William Robinson Leigh’s paintings depicting Yellowstone National Park rank among some of his most compelling images of the American West. His work also notably builds on the tradition of Thomas Moran, who first ventured to the area in 1871 and whose celebrated paintings, watercolors and sketches of the region were instrumental in the area’s establishment as the nation’s first national park. Leigh’s extraordinary Western paintings can also be seen as a personal dream fulfilled; as the artist explained, “I have always felt that the West was the place for me. Even in Europe (as a student), I had this in my mind as my objective, and consistently worked and planned to the end that I might go there and paint.” (as quoted in P.H. Hassrick, 100 Years of Western Art from Pittsburgh Collections, exhibition catalogue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1982, p. 18)