Lot Essay
In the summer of 1906, after much encouragement from his friend Thomas Moran, Leigh struck a deal, with the advertising manager of the Santa Fe railroad lines, to exchange a free railway ticket to the Southwest for a painting of the Grand Canyon. Leigh had left the East depressed and longing for inspiration for his art and after a brief journey, cut short by lack of funds, he returned to the East resolved to travel in the West as often as possible.
Leigh later wrote about the sun setting over the Grand Canyon: "Presently the great shadows began to swallow up the great depths, while the light on the upper pinnacles gathered color; a delicate orange and pearl lilac; a grand kaleidoscopic array of tints. Now the orange light was changing into rose, to vermillion; the shadows to lavender, to purple.....No language, no pigment could be more than a clumsy makeshift; beyond all human power to describe--as sublime drama of light and shade--of color and form--in stately magnificence drew to a close." (W. R. Leigh, My Life in D. D. Cummins, William Robinson Leigh, Norman, 1980, p. 90)
Leigh later wrote about the sun setting over the Grand Canyon: "Presently the great shadows began to swallow up the great depths, while the light on the upper pinnacles gathered color; a delicate orange and pearl lilac; a grand kaleidoscopic array of tints. Now the orange light was changing into rose, to vermillion; the shadows to lavender, to purple.....No language, no pigment could be more than a clumsy makeshift; beyond all human power to describe--as sublime drama of light and shade--of color and form--in stately magnificence drew to a close." (W. R. Leigh, My Life in D. D. Cummins, William Robinson Leigh, Norman, 1980, p. 90)