LOUIS AKIN, AMERICAN ARTIST 



WITH BRIEF QUOTATIONS FROM THE ARTIST'S LETTERS 

 AMONG THE HOPI INDIANS 



By Robert L. Warner 



Illustrations from canvases by Louis Akin. [See frontispiece] 



LOUIS AKIN was born in Oregon in 1868. By his death at Flagstaff, 

 Arizona, January 2, America lost one of the foremost of its young 

 painters. He died at the summit of his powers, his work but half 

 finished. And that work is splendid. His colors are always delicate and 

 harmonious, his canvases full of the mystery of the desert. At the time of 

 his death and for two years previous, he was engaged upon the work of 

 preparation of sketches in oil for the mural decorations of the new South- 

 west Indian wing of the American Museum of Natural History. 



He was one of my boyhood chums with whom friendship had endured 

 up to the present, and I can perhaps appreciate the more his later triumphs 

 in art from having observed the handicaps under which he struggled in 

 early life. More than that of any other man I have known, his character 

 typified passionate love of the great out of doors. 



Louis Akin did not surrender to the conventions by which in general 

 men are bound. His worldly affairs frequently became entangled in a 

 skein of difficulties; his correspondence was often neglected, but when 

 finally there came the answer to half a dozen letters long untouched, it was 

 sure to be so many pages of delightful conversation, illustrated with comical 

 marginal sketches, such a joy to read, that one was made ashamed of 

 impatience and of his own feeble matter-of-fact communications. From 

 one of his letters long ago I quote : 



I have just found an old letter written by my mother to her sister, in the year 

 1867 from near Corvallis, Oregon. That was then the frontier. Said she, "As I sit 

 in our cabin door, looking out across the little river, I can hear the singing of the 

 waterfall, the sweetest sound in all the world for me." That was the year before 

 I was born. Is there any wonder I have always loved the music of the streams, 

 which was my earliest lullaby? 



He first went to Oraibi, Arizona, in the latter part of 1903. I quote the 

 following from a letter received from him a few months later: 



. . . .You see how I'm still holding down my little old stone house — I've out- 

 stayed my intentions long ago — but I'm good for say three months yet. It is 

 simply too good to leave. I haven't done very much work till in the past few weeks 

 — just soaking it in — getting familiar with all I can and finding out what to do and 

 what not to. Now I'm getting at it in earnest. If I can only do the "blooming 

 stuff" well enough! It's the best stuff in America and has scarcely been touched. 

 I've seen some great ceremonies and rites — been in the thick of them — for I've 

 made good friends with everybody. 



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