The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985 Page: 214

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

compare well with De Forrest H. Judd's more high-intensity colored
abstractions. Jerry Bywaters, Otis Dozier, William Lester, and Everett
F. Spruce bring to their images a proto-cubist interpretation of the
land, while E. Gordon West and William L. Hoey paint especially
well the waters of the Rio Grande. Those paintings done in the mid-
193os by artists Jerry Bywaters, Everett Spruce, and William Lester
are particularly strong works which often overwhelm some of the other
paintings reproduced. Other artists included in this book are Al
Brouillette, Marbury Hill Brown, Finis F. Collins, Michael G. Frary,
Frank Gervasi, Ivan E. McDougal, Clay McGaughy, and Stephen T.
Rascoe. A short biographical statement about each artist is also
included.
Ron C. Tyler was the perfect choice to write the introduction to
this book. The author of The Big Bend: A History of the Last Texas
Frontier, Tyler brought to his assignment a conversational narrative
style that makes his history lesson palatable, if not downright enjoyable.
Tyler's introduction sets the tone for the book, the purpose of which
is definitely not academic art history but rather a more relaxed com-
pilation of historical fact, coupled with original images of the country
of the Big Bend.
Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, BECKY DUVAL REESE
The Universiy of Texas at Austin
Westering Man: The Life of Joseph Walker, Master of the Frontier.
By Bil Gilbert. (New York: Atheneum, 1983. Pp. viii+339. Ac-
knowledgments, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $17.95.)
Six feet four inches in height and weighing more than 2oo pounds,
Joseph Reddeford Walker was a giant for his time. In retrospect, he
also looms large in the history of the American West, and his ac-
complishments include enough important firsts to place him easily in
the front rank of those who contributed most to opening the trans-
Mississippi frontier.
Highlights of Walker's life read like benchmarks of western explora-
tion and settlement. As a twenty-year-old in 1819, he left Tennessee
for western Missouri, then at the cutting edge of American migration.
Six years later found him employed as a government scout for the
party that surveyed and marked the Santa Fe Trail. In 1832 he left
for the Rocky Mountains, where he became famous among mountain
men for his courage and acumen. In 1833 he led the initial group of
Americans through the uncharted Sierras. In 1843 he guided the first

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