Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 6

William Robinson Leigh
The Noble Bull

About the Item

William Robinson Leigh "The Noble Bull" Watercolor on Paper Signed Lower Left Site Size: 20 x 15 inches Framed Size: approx. 33.5 inches x 27 inches Born near Falling Waters, West Virginia on a plantation a year after the Civil War, and raised in Baltimore, William Leigh became one of the foremost painters of the American West with a career of seventy-five years. Some people referred to him as the "Sagebrush Rembrandt". He was the son of impoverished Southern aristocrats and took his first art training at age 14 from Hugh Newell (1830-1915) at the Maryland Institute where he was regarded as one of the best students in his class. From 1883 to 1895, he studied in Europe, mainly at the Royal Academy in Munich with Ludwig Loefftz. From 1891 to 1896, he painted six cycloramas or murals in the round, a giant German panorama. In 1896, he began working as a magazine illustrator in New York City for Scribner's and Collier's Weekly Magazine, and he also painted portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes. However, he was not a very successful artist in those years in New York. Trips to the Southwest began in 1906 when he made an agreement with William Simpson, Santa Fe Railway advertising manager, to paint the Grand Canyon in exchange for free transportation West. In 1907, he completed his Grand Canyon painting, which led to many more commissions and an extensive painting trip through Arizona and New Mexico. These travels inspired him to paint western subjects for the next 50 years, but it was not until the 1940s that he received much recognition. He painted in the Southwest nearly every summer between 1912 and 1926 and focused on the Hopi and Navajo Indians. In 1910, he traveled to Wyoming, where he painted in Yellowstone Park and did sketches, many which he later converted into large canvases such as Lower Falls of the Yellowstone (1915) and Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1911). His style was realistic, and his palette invariably had the Southwestern hues of soft pinks, reds, yellows and purples. In fact, his critics who knew little of the Southwest accused him of fabricating the colors. As an older man he was described as a big, powerful man with gray hair and a white handlebar mustache and a deep base voice. He was highly opinionated and absolutely hated modern, abstract art. During the latter part of his career, he painted a series of American historical murals as well as paintings based on his travels to Africa funded by the Eastman Kodak Company and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. For many years, his work was handled exclusively in New York at the Grand Central Art Galleries at the Biltmore Hotel. Many of his works are at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In March, 1999, the Historical Center of Cody, Wyoming held an exhibition of his field sketches and finished works depicting his experiences near Cody, Wyoming in the early part of the century, between 1910 and 1921. These years, many which he spent painting in the Carter Mountain vicinity, were considered crucial to his artistic development because he was exposed to western landscape. His companion during these travels was Cody taxidermist Will Richard who stirred his interest in wildlife. Source: Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art Peggy and Harold Samuels, Artists of the American West Peter Hassrick, Drawn to Yellowstone
More From This SellerView All
  • Season's Greetings 1960 (Brave on Horseback)
    By Olaf Wieghorst
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Olaf Wieghorst (American, 1899-1988) "Season's Greetings" (Brave on Horseback) 1960 Watercolor/Gouache on Paper Initialed and Monogramed and Dated Dedicated: "To Rosalie & Jack, Season's Greetings, Mae & Olaf Xmas 1960" Site Size: 12 x 9 inches Framed Size: approx. 22.5 x 18.5 inches Born in Viborg, Denmark, Olaf Wieghorst was a child acrobatic performer from the age of nine when he began appearances at Tivoli Theater in Copenhagen and later toured Europe. He also learned horseback riding working on a stock farm, and horses became a major focus of his admiration and later his painting. In 1918, he arrived in the United States, having worked as a cabin boy on a steamer. He served in the 5th U.S. Cavalry on the Mexican border in the days of Pancho Villa...
    Category

    1960s American Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor, Gouache

  • Carriage Ride in the Park
    By Constantin Ernest Adolphe Hyacinthe Guys
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Constantin Guys (1802-1892) "Carriage Ride in the Park" c. 1860s Ink and Wash on Paper Original Labels Verso Site Size: approx. 8 x 11.5 inches Framed S...
    Category

    1860s Realist Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Ink, Watercolor

  • Bull
    By William Robinson Leigh
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Bull by W. R. Leigh (1866-1955) Signed Lower Left Unframed: 20" x 16" Framed: 33.25" x 27.25" Born near Falling Waters, West Virginia on a plantation a year after the Civil War, and raised in Baltimore, William Leigh became one of the foremost painters of the American West with a career of seventy-five years. Some people referred to him as the "Sagebrush Rembrandt". He was the son of impoverished Southern aristocrats and took his first art training at age 14 from Hugh Newell (1830-1915) at the Maryland Institute where he was regarded as one of the best students in his class. From 1883 to 1895, he studied in Europe, mainly at the Royal Academy in Munich with Ludwig Loefftz. From 1891 to 1896, he painted six cycloramas or murals in the round, a giant German panorama. In 1896, he began working as a magazine illustrator in New York City for Scribner's and Collier's Weekly Magazine, and he also painted portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes. However, he was not a very successful artist in those years in New York. Trips to the Southwest began in 1906 when he made an agreement with William Simpson, Santa Fe Railway advertising manager, to paint the Grand Canyon in exchange for free transportation West. In 1907, he completed his Grand Canyon painting...
    Category

    Early 20th Century Realist Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor, Paper

  • Majestic Horse
    By Hoi Lebadang
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Hoi Lebedang "Majestic Horse" c. 1950s Original Mixed Media on Paper Signed "Lebedang, Paris" Lower Right Site Size: approx 13 x 20 inches Framed Size: ...
    Category

    1950s Modern Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Ink, Watercolor

  • Lady with Snake Horse
    By Rudy Autio
    Located in Missouri, MO
    Lady with Snake Horse, 1981 By Rudy Autio (1926-2007) Unframed: 29" x 22.5" Framed: 35.75" x 29.25" Signed and Dated Bottom Right Rudy Autio is a ceramist who was born in Butte, Montana, in 1926, and has lived in his native state throughout most of his career. He headed the ceramics department at the University of Montana for twenty-eight years and is now retired as Professor Emeritus of the School of Fine Arts. Prior to his appointment at the University of Montana, Autio was a founding resident artist at the Archie Bray Ceramics Foundation in Helena, Montana. Autio received a Tiffany Award...
    Category

    20th Century Abstract Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Watercolor

  • Two Horses
    By Thomas Hart Benton
    Located in Missouri, MO
    "Two Horses" by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) Signed Lower Right Without Frame: 7" x 10" With Frame: 16.25" x 19.25" Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri on April 15, 1889. Even as a boy, he was no stranger to the "art of the deal" or to the smoke-filled rooms in which such deals were often consummated. His grandfather had been Missouri's first United States Senator and served in Washington for thirty years. His father, Maecenas Benton, was United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri under Cleveland and served in the United States House of Representatives during the McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt administrations. Benton's brother, Nat, was prosecutor for Greene County, Missouri, during the 1930s. As soon as he could walk, Benton traveled with his father on political tours. There he learned the arts of chewing and smoking, and while the men were involved in their heated discussions, Benton delighted in finding new cream colored wallpaper on the staircase wall, at the age of six or seven, and drew in charcoal his first mural, a long multi-car freight train. As soon as he was eighteen, even though his father wanted him to study law, Benton left for Chicago where he studied at the Art Institute during the years 1907 and 1908. He continued his studies in Paris, where he learned delicious wickedness, aesthetic and otherwise. Once back home, he became the leader of the Regionalist School, the most theatrical and gifted of the 1930s muralists and as Harry Truman described him,"the best damned painter in America." Detractors said that Benton was "a fascist, a communist, a racist and a bigot"; the ingenious structure, powerful use of modeling and scale and the high-colored humanity of the murals and easel paintings are retort enough. He was a dark, active dynamo, only 5 ft., 3 1/2 in. tall. He was outspoken, open, charmingly profane; he had a great mane of hair and a face the texture of oak bark. He wore rumpled corduroy and flannel, and walked with the unsteady swagger of a sailor just ashore. He poured a salwart drink, chewed on small black cigars and spat in the fire. Benton was once described as the "churlish dean of regionalist art...
    Category

    20th Century Modern Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Pencil

You May Also Like
  • Long Tailed Sylph, blue and green realist gouache miniature animal portrait
    By Dina Brodsky
    Located in New York, NY
    Dina Brodsky is a contemporary realist miniaturist painter and curator known for her detailed drawings of animals, architecture, and trees. Her miniatures carry with them the traditi...
    Category

    2010s American Realist Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Gouache, Paper

  • Dina Brodsky, Little Rooster, realist gouache miniature animal portrait, 2019
    By Dina Brodsky
    Located in New York, NY
    Dina Brodsky is a contemporary realist miniaturist painter and curator known for her detailed drawings of animals, architecture, and trees. Her miniatures carry with them the traditi...
    Category

    2010s American Realist Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Gouache

  • Yellow Bird Akimbo, contemporary realist gouache miniature animal portrait
    By Dina Brodsky
    Located in New York, NY
    Dina Brodsky's realist miniature gouache painting, Yellow Bird Akimbo, is kinetic and visceral. Clinging to diverging branches, the little yellow shock of a bird is caught betwixt an...
    Category

    2010s American Realist Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor, Gouache

  • Osprey, contemporary realist gouache on paper animal miniature
    By Dina Brodsky
    Located in New York, NY
    Dina Brodsky is a contemporary realist miniaturist painter and curator known for her detailed drawings of animals, architecture, and trees. Her miniatures carry with them the traditi...
    Category

    2010s American Realist Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Gouache

  • Dina Brodsky, Crested Caracara, realist gouache animal portrait miniature, 2019
    By Dina Brodsky
    Located in New York, NY
    Dina Brodsky is a contemporary realist miniaturist painter and curator known for her detailed drawings of animals, architecture, and trees. Her miniatures carry with them the traditi...
    Category

    2010s American Realist Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Gouache

  • Peacock, contemporary realist gouache on paper miniature animal portrait
    By Dina Brodsky
    Located in New York, NY
    Dina Brodsky's realist animal miniature, Peacock, is an updated, humorous take on Renaissance portraiture. The peacock's gleaming jade, aqua, and royal blue plumage sweeps around him...
    Category

    2010s American Realist Animal Drawings and Watercolors

    Materials

    Paper, Watercolor, Gouache

Recently Viewed

View All