Art: Painter on Horseback

That modern art is a frightful thing is an opinion which many a layman shares—and some artists. William Robinson Leigh is one of them. The trouble began, he thinks, with the Algerian wars (1830-47), which made absinthe a French fashion. Artist Leigh, 81, is not the absinthe type, as Manhattan gallerygoers could see last week. West Virginia-born, he spent the Gay Nineties in the Royal Academy at Munich, mastering—between occasional beers —the realistic painting then in demand.

That realism just suited the Wild West he wanted to paint: the lurid desert sunsets, the cowboys and Indians, bucking broncs and buffaloes. Leigh roamed the vast raw country on horseback, turned east with a firsthand knowledge second only to Frederic Remington's. "Those tired old nags at the rodeo," he says chuckling into his snowy cavalry mustache, "don't know the first thing about bucking." Invited on two scientific expeditions to Africa, Leigh sketched constantly and confidently, came back to paint a series of vivid panoramas for the New York Museum of Natural History's African Hall.

How does he make his pictures look so real? Placing his fingertips gently together, Leigh tried to explain the vanishing art: "You start with a detailed charcoal drawing and then paint over that—the most distant thing first. If there are no clouds, the sky may take no more than a day. The distant figures may be done in a week. It gets more difficult as you approach the foreground—a large canvas may take four to six months altogether— but the most economical way is to finish as you go. At least that's what / was taught."