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Lot Essay
In 1906, Albert Goring, a former fellow Munich student of William Robinson Leigh, invited the artist to visit Laguna, New Mexico. Leigh desperately needed a new environment and fresh artistic stimulation, but could not afford the fare for the trip. At this time, the Santa Fe Railroad advertising division was sponsoring art expeditions to the west for their calendar series. Leigh appealed to the advertising manager and so accepted a painting commission in trade for a railroad ticket to Laguna. In September of that year, Leigh arrived in Laguna, and ". . . thoroughly enchanted declared, 'I stood alone in a strange and thrilling scene. At last I was on the land where I was to prove whether I was fit--worthy of the opportunity--able to do it justice--or just a dunderhead.' There in New Mexico, all of the pieces fell into place: the Munich training that so strongly emphasized genre subjects, his own long-standing attraction to nature, and the new idea that he had adopted from [Thomas] Moran: that of producing truly native art." (William Robinson Leigh: Western Artist, pp. 86-87)
Over the next several years, Leigh made many trips west and endeavored to make the west his home. In his work, he remained true to his Munich training, striving for accurate realism in his highly finished canvases depicting Native Americans, whom he grew to respect and admire. "'I painted studies there which have served me wonderfully well,' Leigh writes of Ganado. 'After some three weeks, two young men arrived together. [Emry] Kopta and [Lon] Megargee. The three of us went to Canyon de Chelly, a deep cleft between red sandstone walls. I climbed to some abodes that looked as if they had not been visited before by whites...Our camp was a level space at the foot of an eighteen-hundred-foot cliff and was conveniently near a fine dripping spring.'" (J. Du Bois, W.R. Leigh: The Definitive Illustrated Biography, 1977, p. 88) The present work in fact relates to two additional paintings depicting a similar scene, the first entitled Dripping Springs and the second First Mesa, both in the collection of the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Over the next several years, Leigh made many trips west and endeavored to make the west his home. In his work, he remained true to his Munich training, striving for accurate realism in his highly finished canvases depicting Native Americans, whom he grew to respect and admire. "'I painted studies there which have served me wonderfully well,' Leigh writes of Ganado. 'After some three weeks, two young men arrived together. [Emry] Kopta and [Lon] Megargee. The three of us went to Canyon de Chelly, a deep cleft between red sandstone walls. I climbed to some abodes that looked as if they had not been visited before by whites...Our camp was a level space at the foot of an eighteen-hundred-foot cliff and was conveniently near a fine dripping spring.'" (J. Du Bois, W.R. Leigh: The Definitive Illustrated Biography, 1977, p. 88) The present work in fact relates to two additional paintings depicting a similar scene, the first entitled Dripping Springs and the second First Mesa, both in the collection of the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.