The Rocky Mountains by Patricia Trenton and Peter H. Hassrick, and: Masters of Western Art by Mary Carroll Nelson, and: The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions: Photographs of Indians by Edward S. Curtis by Christopher M. Lyman, and: American Women Artists from Early Indian Times to the Present by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein

Abstract

Essay Review Trenton, Patricia, and Peter H. Hassrick. The Rocky Mountains. (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. 418 pages, $65.) Nelson, Mary Carroll. Masters of Western Art. (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1982. 176 pages, $27.50.) Lyman, Christopher M. The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions: Photo­ graphs of Indians by Edward S. Curtis. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982. 158 pages, $14.95.) Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer. American Women Artists from Early Indian Times to the Present. (Boston: G. K. Hall and Company, 1982. 560 pages, $12.95.) Life in the American West, from the frontier to the present, is best exemplified by the work of the artists of the American West. During recent years, four books have appeared which attempt to synthesize media and man. Each explores specific aspects of the West: a wilderness at once dangerous and free, a place for men and women to conquer, a source of potential wealth, a means of escape into nature, a place of freedom from a society filled with limits and boundaries, a place of cultural growth. When looked at together, these four books represent growth and change not only in the art medium itself, but in the men and women, Indians, wildlife, and landscape of the West; their pages follow the growth of western art from an embryonic stage express­ ing awe and mystery, to the technical and scientific approach of artisttopographers , to the first use of photography — at one time considered a pure representation in which “the camera never lied” — to the interpretive depic­ tion and freer images of artists today. The Rocky Mountains traces the evolution of landscape painting, depict­ ing that area of the Rocky Mountains which embraces Washington, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Ever since the late eighteenth century when the “mighty spine” of North America received its present name, no mountains in America life have been written about more often than the Rockies. The authors suggest that it is the artist’s vision that has brought forth the “full splendor and commanding allure” of the Rocky Mountains, and indeed, of the West. Trenton and Hassrick’s careful handling of the material makes The Rocky Mountains colorful as well as informative reading. Each of the book’s ten chapters is prefaced by a quote — a brief literary impression of an artist or pioneer — giving the reader a glimpse of the literary movements paralleling 52 Western American Literature the artistic developments. The chapters trace the development of landscape art chronologically, beginning in 1803 with the government topographical artists whose primary task was to record physical geography; through the 1830s with Alfred Jacob Miller, who concentrated more on mood and expres­ sion than the details of topography; to the middle of the century with Alfred Bierstadt’s “grandiloquent scenes” and the ensuing westward movement of artists who were drawn to the frontier; to the regional art in Colorado, Utah and other areas that flourished at the end of the century. The chapters explore in detail not only the likes of Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, William Keith, and Thomas Moran, but also the many amateur painters, awkward and lacking skill, but of unquestionable value for their “fresh naivete.” The final chapters track the last decades of the nineteenth century and the work of Charles M. Russell, Henry Farny, John Twatchtman and Frederic Reming­ ton, who were the “last guardians of the frontier.” In Remington’s words, they preserved on canvas “those pristine features of America’s unique scenery, before they were doomed by the ‘ax of civilization.’” Mary Carroll Nelson brings the reader another vision of the American West in her book Masters of Western Art. This book intends to give western art increased status and dignity by showing its growing popularity and importance. The author shows, through her treatment of the artists, that there is no single concept of the West; any number of artists could have been chosen with as many visions emerging. Nelson has selected twelve artists (James Boren, John Clymer, Wilson Hurley, Ben Konis, George Marks, Stephen Naegle, Jean Parrish, Morris Rippel, Sandy Scott, Gordon Snidow, Doris Steider, and Howard Terpning) who, working in distinctively different ways, have established themselves...