The
Call of the Mountains
The Artists of Glacier National Park
June 27
to October 12, 2002
Creek by
John
Fery
Courtesy
of Paul Masa Gallery |
Empire Builders
See America
First! Said the Great
Northern Railway for several generations.
The Great Northern commissioned painters like Adolph Heinze,
John Fery, Kathryn Leighton, and Winold Reiss to portray Glacier
National Park on canvas and paper. Louis Hill invested thousands
annually in promoting his "Empire Builder" train line
and it's accommodations, patronizing many fine artists over
the years.
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See America First Campaign
Louis Hill brought many artists to Glacier National Park. Hill and
the Great Northern Railway touted Glacier National Park as the "Switzerland
of America," and the Park was soon to become the focus of the
"See America First" campaign that had earlier been developed
and used by a variety of tourist's agencies and industries.
If Hill were to lure wealthy eastern tourists who had formerly traveled
to Europe or had spent their vacations at resorts and spas in the
East, the advertising campaign would have to be imaginative and expensive.
Neither qualification was a problem for Louis W. Hill. As early as
1911 he had sponsored groups of eastern journalists, newspapermen,
travel agents, and the Chicago Geographical Society to travel to the
new national park in order to describe its exceptional scenery to
the American people, who where more interested in touring than ever
before. The promotional campaign included a Great Northern Art Show,
costing a reported fifty thousand dollars. The exhibition depicted
the newly formed park as a romantic Western Landscape worthy of Americans
interest.
Austrian painter John Fery provided the majority of the canvases.
Paintings by Charles M. Russell, the popular cowboy and western artist
from Great Falls, were included later as were numerous large-format
photographs by Fred H. Kiser, the first official photographer of Glacier
Park. All became the foundation for popular exhibits in New York and
Chicago.
In 1914 Hill spent almost 750,000 dollars on the advertising campaign,
to say nothing of the free publicity her garnered through such a gimmick
as sending a contingent of Blackfeet Indians to New York City, where
at his urging they refused to take rooms in the McAlpine Hotel, and
instead pitched tipis on the roof.
The Great Northern Railway printed books, maps, and pamphlets with
such revealing titles as Western Trips for Eastern People,
Short Jaunts of Little Money, and Glacier National Park
Indian Portfolio. Hill's relentless promotion included luring
newsreel companies like Pathe Freres into the park to create interesting
events such as a December expedition that battled a blizzard on Mount
Elizabeth and the visit of President William Howard Taft's children
-- Robert and Helen, with Blackfeet at Two Medicine Lake.
Hill worked with producers of travel films and documentaries to create
Great Indian Dramas, Camping with the Blackfeet and
Across Swiftcurrent Pass on Horseback. Newsreels and western
movies were exploding in popularity and literally millions of filmgoers
the world over came to know about Glacier National Park and the Glacier
Park Indians.
Winold Reiss (1888 - 1953) Winold Reiss first learned
about the American West reading frontier adventure novels like James
Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Fritz Reiss, Winold's
father, realized his son had talent and enrolled him at the Royal
Academy of Fine Arts and the School of Applied Arts in Munich. Winold
fell in love with a fellow student, Henrietta Luethy, and they married
in 1912. Reiss convinced his bride that they should come to America.
When they arrived in New York the following year, he naively expected
to be greeted by Indians. Settling in New York City and anxious to
paint Indians, Reiss eventually found a model, a Blackfoot recently
fired from the circus. With his model dressed in a war bonnet and
beaded shirt borrowed from the American Museum of Natural History,
Reiss completed his first authentic Indian portrait. By 1918 he had
saved enough money to allow him to chase his dreams of the West in
real Indian country. In the fall of 1919, he traveled alone to Browning,
Montana on the Great Northern. Eagerly jumping off the train in Browning,
Reiss enthusiastically slapped the first Blackfoot he encountered
on the back and shouted "How!" Turtle, A.K.A Angry Bull,
didn't take offense, and the two became lifelong friends. He shared
sleeping quarters with a cowboy at the Haggerty Hotel and used one
of its public rooms as a makeshift studio. Reiss produced 35 portraits
of the Blackfeet within the month, using brilliant colors in pastel
and tempera, rather than traditional oil. The Blackfeet bestowed on
him the name Beaver Child.
Back in New York, he exhibited his new works at the H. Hanfstaengl
Gallery, and in January 1920, they caught the eye of Dr. Philip Cole,
who purchased the entire group, now exhibited at the Bradford Brinton
Memorial in Big Horn, Wyoming. Reiss spent the next eight years teaching,
filling commercial orders, and illustrating for magazines.
Reiss convinced his brother Hans to join him in operating his art
school. Hans suffered asthma attacks in the heavy, humid air of New
York, and he traveled to Glacier National Park for a change of climate.
He decided to stay and became a licensed guide in the Park. By chance,
one of his clients was Louis Hill. Their association led to a contract
for Winold Reiss.
For ten years beginning in 1927, Winold Reiss returned to Browning
every summer to paint for the Great Northern Railway. Accompanying
him on his first trip was his 13 year-old son, Tjark, who acted as
a helper and crayon sharpener. Reiss asked Tjark to record some of
the history of each Indian who posed for him. On April 14, 1928, fifty
of Reiss' paintings were exhibited at a one-man show, titled American
Indian Portraits, at the Belmaison Galleries in New York.
The Great Northern Railway published a companion book to the exhibition.
Many exhibitions followed, in America and overseas. Louis Hill bought
at least 80 paintings, many of which found their way to the covers
of railroad calendars, continually printed for thirty years by Brown
and Bigelow. Each year Reiss stopped painting in early September to
allow Tjark to return to school in New York. Finished portraits were
sent from Browning to the Great Northern Railway headquarters in St.
Paul. For three years he also ran a summer art school with his friend
Carl Link, renting a cabin from Hugh and Mary Black near St. Mary's
Lake.
The Great Northern Art School Winold
Reiss played a dual role for the Great Northern as an artist and as
a teacher in the mid-1930s. His friend, the outstanding New York painter
Carl Link, came out from New York to teach with him in the summer
at the St. Mary Chalets. Link's teaching experience at the Art Student's
League and Columbia University helped give the school an excellent
reputation when he teamed up with Reiss. Tjark Reiss remembered: "Classes
started at nine each morning. usually the Indians posed in their own
ceremonial robes..." Karoal Miener, a noted student, praised
him: "Reinold always found something nice to say about your picture,
and then with a slight touch of a finger rubbing-out or adding a line,
your picture was OK. He also insisted that parts were done again,
but seemed to know how far or how much to criticize each picture according
to the pupil." While most students enrolled through New York
University and paid tuition, exceptions were made for several talented
Blackfeet, including Gerald Tailfeathers. The summer school's most
notable woman student,
Elizabeth Davey Lochrie later recalled: "I got aquainted with
the Indians. I found them so paintable that I've done them ever since.
I've done hundreds, maybe thousands. Every summer after (1931) I either
took the children or left them home with the maid, and I went to Glacier
or the Flathead, or somewhere to paint Crow, Nez Perce, Blackfeet,
Assiniboine. I spent all summer chasing Indians." Feeling the
effects of the Depression, the Great Northern Railway closed the school
after the summer of 1937, and a disappointed Winold Reiss stayed in
New York.
Elizabeth Davey Lochrie
Elizabeth Davey Lochrie was born in Deer Lodge, July 1, 1890. Her
life was spent in early Montana settlements with "braid"
Indian neighbors; she was educated in Butte schools and received her
art education at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1911. During 1924-1925
she painted eighteen children's murals for the Montana State Hospital.
After 1931 Lochrie specialized in Native American portraits, particularly
of Blackfeet tribal members, having produced more than a thousand
water colors, oils, murals and sculptures. Admission to her lectures
was frequently a donation of clothing and other necessities for needy
native Americans. She was adopted by the Blackfeet and given the name
"Netchitaki" which translates as "Woman Alone In Her
Way." The Blackfeet said, "She came to us from over the
Western mountains, this white woman. She was friendly and understanding.
We brought her into the medicine teepee and made her our sister."
She later recalled her days at the Great Northern Summer Art School,
studying with Weinold Reiss: "I got aquainted with the Indians.
I found them so paintable that I've done them ever since. I've done
hundreds, maybe thousands. Every summer after (1931) I either took
the children or left them home with the maid, and I went to Glacier
or the Flathead, or somewhere to paint Crow, Nez Perce, Blackfeet,
Assiniboine. I spent all summer chasing Indians." From 1937 to
1939, Lochrie painted some historic murals in the post offices at
Burley and Saint Anthony, Idaho and in Dillon and Galen, Montana.
From 1936 to 1939, she was staff artist for the Great Northern Railroad
in Glacier National Park.
Gerald Tailfeathers (1925 - 1975) Gerald
Tailfeathers was born on the Standoff Blood Reserve, Alberta, in 1925.
His native names translate as Big Walking Away (Omuka-nista-payh'pee)
and Walking on Top (Eets-pahp-awag-uh'ka). He had the advantage of
formal art education and utilized its lessons in both the field of
commercial art and in fine art. Tailfeathers' careers, as artist,
draughtsman, and Indian rights activist, kept him moving back and
forth between his reserve and the city throughout his life. Tailfeathers
worked in charcoal and pastel, two media that he perfected while under
the tutelage of Winold Reiss and Carl Link, who ran a summer art school
at St. Mary's Lake when he was a young man. In addition to the artistic
education he recieved during this time, Tailfeathers also developed
a knowledge of his own Blood people and their traditions. Rooming
with a number of elders, he was privy to their evening stories around
the campfire. While most students paid tuition, exceptions were made
for several talented Blackfeet, including Gerald. In 1941, Tailfeathers
began studies at the Banff School of Fine Arts, then studied at the
Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary in 1942. Here
the artist learned the skills of the design trade that he would apply
as a commercial artist for the Hudson's Bay Company for many years.
Early on, he was instructed to anglicize his name and signed his work
"Gerald T. Fethers" until 1963, when he finally started
signing his own name again. In 1957 he began to make a concerted effort
to be accurate in terms of the historical significance of his work
-- depicting incidents and events in the history of the Blood Indians
of Alberta. In 1959, after 18 years as a city dweller, Gerald moved
back to the Blood Reserve and began painting in earnest. He would
continue to be prolific until his death in 1975. As one of the first
Native artists to be active within the mainstream Canadian visual
arts community, Gerald Tailfeathers stands out. He melded a career
marked by commitment to his art, his community, and to social activism
for the rights of First Nations peoples.
John Fery (1859
- 1934) Johann Nepomuk Levy was born in Strasswalchen, Austria on
March 25, 1859 and grew up in Pressburg. His father urged him to study
art and literature, and in 1881, he enrolled at the Vienna Academy
of Art. Upon moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1883, Johann legally
changed his name to John Fery in order to better adapt to his new
country. He returned to Europe where he married Mary Rose Kraemer.
After their first child was born in 1885, he went back to Milwaukee
with his family. The following years found Fery leaving his wife and
children for extended periods to paint in the West. Recognition came
slowly, but his work finally caught the attention of Louis Hill of
the Great Northern railroad, who immediately hired him for the "See
America First" campaign. From 1910 through 1913, Fery was on
the payroll of the Great Northern. He completed an amazing 347 major
oil paintings for the astoundingly low average price of $31.70 each.
The paintings he created decorated Glacier National Park lodges, ticket
agent offices, and Great Northern depots from St. Paul to Seattle.
Although dramatically underpaid, Fery had the benefit of a studio
and living quarters in St. Paul, a free railroad pass, lodging in
Glacier, along with a yearly salary of $2,400. Always prolific, he
averaged nearly 14 outdoor scenes each month. In 1914 he was "loaned"
to the Northern Pacific Railway to paint scenes of Yellowstone National
Park. The next year he returned to Glacier to complete paintings for
the opening of Many Glacier Hotel. Following the event, Fery found
himself OFF the payroll of the Great Northern. He spent the next few
years free-lancing throughout the West, before moving back to Milwaukee
in 1923. In 1925, Louis Hill again called on Fery, offering the same
salary paid in 1910, but without the provision for a studio. The contract
required Fery to produce four to six large canvases monthly. Desperate
for work, he spent the next four summers painting in Glacier. In 1929,
the Ferys moved to Orcas Island, Washington to be closer to their
children. A new studio was built, but that fall a fire destroyed all
the paintings he had finished for the Great Northern. After months
of stalling, the Great Northern agreed to pay Fery $600 for seventeen
paintings that were due them. After that, there were no more contracts.
Fery's wife died in the spring of 1930, making his final years sad
and lonely.
Kathryn Leighton Born in Plainfield,
New Hampshire, Kathryn was a celebrated Indian portrait and landscape
painter. She attended Kimball Union Academy near Plainfield and graduated
in 1900 from the Massachusetts Normal Art School. That same year,
she married attorney Edward Leighton, and then studied in Paris and
Vienna. In 1910, she and her husband moved to Los Angeles where she
studied at the Stickney School of Art in Pasadena. Doing floral still
life and landscapes, she repeatedly depicted her favorite subject,
which was the desert in bloom. In 1918, she began to paint American
Indian portraits, many of them signed by the sitter, and this endeavor
brought her international recognition. Having been told about Glacier
National Park by Charles Russell, she spent much time in that region
where she created panoramic landscapes. Katherine visited Charlie
Russell at his retreat at Bull Head Lodge in 1925, where she made
a painting on one of the muslin "privacy screens" in the
cabin (now in the C. M. Russell Museum collection), joining the proud
company which included Maynard Dixon, Philip R. Goodwin, and Joe De
Yong. In 1926, The Great Northern Railway purchased all of her Glacier
Park paintings of that year. Russell introduced her to the Blackfeet
Indians who adopted her into their tribe after she had spent several
summers with them painting portraits of the old chiefs and other prominent
members of the tribe. She did twenty-two paintings of Blackfeet elders
for The Great Northern Railway, whose personnel used them in lecture
series about the disintegration of Indian cultural traditions. In
1929, she toured Europe and the Eastern United States with her paintings,
and gained widespread recognition for her artistic skill and the educational
aspects of her work. She also painted the Sioux and Cherokee in Oklahoma
and did other Indian portraits from her studio in Los Angeles. These
portraits, numbering about 700, remain a valuable, lasting historical
record of their customs, clothing and lore.
Adolph Heinze (1887
- 1958) German-born painter Adolf Heinze was commissioned by the Great
Northern Railway to create images of Glacier park for brochures and
posters. He was photographed on Logan Pass touching up a painting
of one of the peaks. One of his paintings shows early versions of
the famous red motor coaches which are so closely identified with
Glacier.
Julius Seyler (1873 -1955) When Julius
Seyler first traveled to Montana, he was forty years old and already
a successful artist. Born in 1873, Seyler began his studies at the
prestigious Munich Academy of Fine Arts in 1894. He seemed equally
as interested in pursuing a career as a speed skater. Unwilling to
choose one over the other, he excelled at both.
In 1895 he skated to the German National Championship and twice became
the European titleholder. Painting kept its hold on Seyler. Seyler's
connection to the United States came through a young Norwegian-American
art student Helga Boechmann, whom he met as early as 1900 while they
were attending the Munich Academy. After a ten-year courtship, the
two married in St. Paul, Minnesota.
It was through his bride's family that Seyler was introduced to Louis
W. Hill of the Great Northern Railway. Louis Hill invited Seyler to
be his personal guest in Glacier National Park and to visit the developing
tourist network of gracious mountain hotels and interlinking roads
and trails. In June of 1913, Seyler and Louis Hill left St. Paul on
the evening train, steaming west toward Montana, relaxing in Hill's
private railroad car. Seyler wrote home to Germany of his superb accommodations
and of his eager expectations for the trip. Communication with Hill
was difficult for the German-speaking artist, the two were essentially
reduced to sign language. Staying at Glacier Park Lodge, between the
Blackfeet and Flathead Indian Reservations, Seyler was impacted strongly
by the dramatic scenery of the Park, as well as the brilliant colored
attire of the Indians. The concept of the nomadic Indians living in
balance with nature, free on the boundless stretches of land fringed
with forests, provided this European artist with a great contrast
to his own birthplace -- a catalyst that consumed him, exploding in
a passionate rendering of his work.
Seyler was different fro the many artists Hill commissioned to paint
the Park. He was not under contract or employed by the Great Northern
Railway. And while other artists were depicting Glacier's scenic grandeur
in terms that were recognizable and popular, Seyler's paintings were
not as literal or visually exact. Instead, he painted in the late-impressionist
manner, where visual reality was fragmented and dissolved into a light-infused
kaleidoscope of brush strokes.
At the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Sixty-ninth
Regiment Armory Show in New York, modern art, including Seyler's,
was criticized by many detractors as "...extreme, degenerate,
and dangerous to American morals."
Seyler came to focus more on the cultural icons of the Blackfeet,
than on the images of the unspoiled mountain scenery promoted as the
"wildest part of America."
The Blackfeet, contrary to the advertising department of the Great
Northern, were not essentially a mountain people. Seyler focused more
on the historic life of the Blackfeet as a people inhabiting the high
plains. Julius Seyler spent two idyllic summers in Glacier National
Park and the Blackfeet Reservation. He was adopted into the Blackfeet,
and given the name "Boss Ribs," by Jack Big Moon. His greatest
honor among the Blackfeet was an invitation to the Sun Dance in 1914.
Helga and Julius moved back to Minnesota to stay with the Boechmanns
for seven years. He visited Montana a few more times before relocating
to Germany, eventually becoming a professor at his alma mater, the
Munich Academy.
Poor health and World War Two frustrated any efforts to return to
the United States before his death in 1955.
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