cover image Techniques of the Artists of the American West

Techniques of the Artists of the American West

Harold Samuels, Joan Samuels. Booksales, $29.98 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-55521-662-7

The thesis that painters of the American West did not form a cohesive, distinct school is cogently argued in this unusual showcase. It features 21 paintings, each accompanied by a biographical profile of the artist plus a minutely detailed analysis of the work aided by photographic enlargements. Albert Bierstadt's sublimely grandiose Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall stands miles apart from Ernest Blumenschein's hard-edged journalistic genre painting of a sheepherder's trial for murder and from Grace Hudson's Victorian portraits of California's Pomo Indians. The technical analyses demonstrate that the Wild West painters were aesthetic sophisticates, not ``cowboy daubers.'' Equally intriguing are such biographical profiles as the tragic story of mystic Ralph Blakelock, a foremost painter of Indians' primeval woodlands, who became schizophrenic and spent his last 20 years in insane asylums. Also represented are Georgia O'Keeffe, Frederic Remington, N. C. Wyeth and George Catlin. Peggy and Harold Samuels are the authors of Frederic Remington ; their daughter Joan Samuels and her husband Daniel Fabian are conservators of paintings in Switzerland. (Dec.)