The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 93, July 1989 - April, 1990 Page: 78
598 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
to rekindle some earlier ambition, or it has to tell about a time and a people
dear to you."
Much of this kind of emotional attachment to western art becomes
clearer in Saunders's essay because he was able to interview C. R. Smith
and had access to the letter files of the Amon Carter Museum. Thus, as
C. R. Smith's statement above suggests, these collectors were definitely
not philistines, as eastern critics have often assumed. They were knowl-
edgeable, and they cared about western art as a metaphor for all they
admired in America's history in which they saw themselves as consider-
able figures. Besides his love for western art, for instance, C. R. Smith
organized American Airlines, and he will go down in history as an avia-
tion pioneer. Amon Carter merely organized Fort Worth.
Needless to say, Saunders's essay, while rarely addressing itself to the
"why" of western art collecting, identifies many private collectors and
institutional collectors and is therefore very useful. Perhaps this is a
quibble, but early on, when he is discussing U.S.-supported art works,
Saunders really fails to note the magnitude of federal patronage, espe-
cially that connected with government-sponsored exploring expedi-
tions. John Mix Stanley is an outstanding example of this, as he painted
watercolors for the Pacific Railroad Surveys of 1853-1854, oils to docu-
ment Kearny's march to California during the Mexican War, and In-
dian portraits that hung in the Smithsonian until they were destroyed
by fire in 1865. Almost nothing is mentioned in Saunders's essay about
the major government support for artists like W. H. Holmes, Thomas
Moran, Henry Wood Elliott, and numerous others who accompanied
the great scientific western surveys after the Civil War.
The rest of Collecting the West is devoted to color plates of each paint-
ing in the Texas collection accompanied by usually perceptive discus-
sions of the works by art history and American Studies graduate stu-
dents. The University of Texas collection does not represent the whole
of Smith's holdings, however. Missing are many of the 35 oils, 51 water-
colors, and 136 C. R. Russell bronzes purchased as a group by Smith in
1941.' Thus, in looking through the university collection, one finds
perhaps a dozen gems: Bierstadt's Friend or Foe; a striking work by
the little-known artist, William Gilbert Gaul; Ransome Holdredge's
Montana Encampment, long thought to be a work by E. I. Couse; an
Alfred Jacob Miller lake scene in the Wind River Mountains; a dra-
matic Schreyvogel or two; and, most impressive, a number of excellent
works by Henry Farny. Hopefully with the publication of Saunders's
"Saunders, Collecting the West, 49.
7William Foxley, Frontzer Spnrit: Catalog of the Collection of the Museum of Western Art (Denver,
Colo." Museum of Western Art, 1983), 38.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 93, July 1989 - April, 1990, periodical, 1990; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101213/m1/104/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.