WESTERN ARTISTS. 573 



whether it shall be a near, or a distant mountain view, whether water, or rocks, 

 or foliage shall predominate, whether it shall be romantic or beautiful — and have it 

 sent after them when it is finished. This making of pictures to order is an ex- 

 tensive business in Colorado, and, if no better, these paintings are at least no 

 worse than the shiny daubs of the "■ Palisades," " Lake George" and the "White 

 Mountains," by " New York artists," with which cheap picture stores and street- 

 peddlers have flooded the West for so many years, and it is the purpose of this 

 rambling chat to defend, in a measure, the right of these western painters to the 

 title of " artists; " a better right, at least, than the painters of most of the pictures 

 which are brought to the West from the East by dealers. 



Their strongest claim to the title lies in the fact that they are doing their best 

 Comparatively few of the Rocky Mountain students are painting by the square 

 yard for a living. Hundreds of them are mspired with the idea that they are 

 " born " artists, that some day their works will be sought for and exhibited, and, 

 best of all, paid for at a high price. Of course a majority of them will paint 

 themselves out in a few years, but western people need not sneer at them as a 

 class on that account, for there will be found among them comparatively as many 

 real artists in ten years from now as there will be successful merchants among 

 the many who are embarking in that pursuit, and it may result quite as much to 

 the enviable fame of the great West if we, as western people, take a little pains to 

 seek out and encourage the promising artists in our midst as to pay our court ex- 

 clusively to the merchant princes. Of course we are a too practical people to 

 think of comparing art to commerce in point of importance, but if we can recov- 

 er for a moment from the intoxication of business we will all admit that we are in 

 danger of crowding everything else out. And if we soberly reflect, we can con- 

 ceive that Art was once young, even in Greece, and that it required the worship 

 of a whole people to elevate it to the noble place it finally reached there. 



It is worth while for any one who goes to the Rocky Mountains, and to 

 Denver, to visit the ateliers and note the difference in the work of the numerous 

 aspirants for fame. To be sure his feelings will be wounded when he sees the 

 great canvases of some boy-painter who thinks he has caught the translucent at- 

 mosphere of a twilight or a day-break that is almost as subtle as the human ex- 

 pression, and that none but a Turner can mimic, and he will turn discouraged 

 from the great bald rocks that look as if one might lay a hand on them and leave 

 a deep imprint, as in putty, while the sky above them seems as hard as the bot- 

 tom of a baking dish; but if he perseveres he will come upon a bit of canon, or 

 a burnt-pine mountain side with a new growth of quaking asps fringing its feet, 

 or a snowy peak with a cool sky behind it, that will astonish him and please him 

 greatly. He will say to himself, " After all there are some pictures here." And 

 if he is at all picture-wise he will conclude that the best way to secure a satisfac- 

 tory souvenir of the mountains is to seek it in the studios of Colorado Springs or 

 Denver. 



