(September 23 - 26, 2016) Fort Worth – Dallas, Texas
My son Harry and I escaped our everyday life for a football and Cowtown Culture long weekend in my Holy Land.
After a late Friday morning arrival at DFW we scampered off for a lunch at Lockhart Smokehouse in Oak Cliff next to the Bishop Arts District. The Cue was really good and welcome after a long barbecue drought but it does not measure up to Smitty’s or Kruez Market in the real Lockhart. Before leaving Oak Cliff we stopped at the historical marker for Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit who was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald about forty-five minutes after Oswald’s assassination of President Kennedy. It was interesting to learn that Tippit had received the Bronze Star for his airborne crossing of the Rhine River in March 1945. We next ventured into nearby downtown Big D to do some genealogical research (unsuccessfully). On our way we stopped for a moment to check out John Neely Bryan’s Cabin and an across the street look at Dallas’ Memorial to President John F Kennedy. Bryan was an Indian trader, farmer and lawyer who founded Dallas.
After checking into our hotel, we picked up our cousins, Zach and Steve, and went to the very nice stadium on the SMU campus for the Frog and Pony Show (TCU v. SMU football game). The Frogs after a slow offensive start ran over the Mustangs 33 – 3. Note: The on campus stadium has horrible parking.
Saturday morning, we were off to Fort Worth for a day of culture. We arrived at my Museum Mother Ship, The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth (formerly the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art.) The Carter Museum is located in the Fort Worth Cultural District, formerly named Amon Carter Square. Carter was our City Father. A little more on him later, but Carter was America’s foremost collector of western artists Frederic Remington and Charles Russell and the national epitome of the Rich Texan. His good friend, actor and humorist Will Rogers introduced Carter to Western Art. The museum opened in 1961.
Carter bequeathed an endowment for the beautifully designed Phillip Johnson museum to store and display his extensive art collection. Admission is free. If you ever find yourself in Cowtown with even a free hour The Carter is a MUST See!
Harry and I planned to arrive for the eleven o’clock docent led tour of and overview of the permanent collection. Because it was a Saturday and there was light traffic we arrived about forty-five minutes early. At the Museum’s information desk we were told there was a tour in progress of the Charles Russell collection. We joined the tour being conducted by a costumed docent acting as Charles Marion Russell, the cowboy artist. His portrayal added another dimension to my understanding Russell. Russell was noted as a great storyteller. Our guide, a middle aged gentleman named Joe Strain knew Russell and when telling Russell stories, he was both informative and entertaining. In character Russell told us about two of his sculpted bronzes of the Indian warrior Medicine Whip. Out of character he backgrounded us on Russell’s life.
Both Russell and Remington painted the disappearing American West primarily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Russell was from near St. Louis and worked in watercolor, oils, and sculpture. At age sixteen he moved to Montana where he worked as a ranch hand and occasional trapper. When he was thirty-two years old he married Nancy Bates Cooper and they resided in Cascade, Montana. Nancy was certain that Charlie had marketable talent and persuaded him to pursue art as an occupation. Wife and husband soon moved to Great Falls where Russell would open his art studio.
Strain emphasized besides appreciating great art, Amon Carter also appreciated the joy of acquisition. At Carter’s repeated suggestion, his friend Fort Worth oilman Sid Richardson began acquiring Western Art as well. Strain explained unlike Carter, Richardson purchased in mass. Richardson would call art dealers, primarily in New York City and ask what that had in Western art and he would buy their entire inventory. Carter purchased onesies and twosies, Richardson purchased in large lots. However in contrast Carter amassed a Texas size collection of 330 Russell’s while Richardson assembled only 50.
The absolute bonus of the Russell tour was the last ten minutes we were taken to the Museum’s library for a brief look at the inner sanctum. The library has an extensive collection of research materials including a complete collection of all the original editions of Harper’s Weekly magazine. The library is only open to the public part time on Saturdays. Archivist and Reference Services Manager, Jonathan Frembling conducted a short presentation. I love libraries and the Carter’s blew me away.
What Frembling had on the table for us to look at was the complete Karl Bodmer original first edition folio of his trip with German Prinz Maximillian zu Wied-Neuvied. This expedition took place from 1832 to 1834 and trans versed the Indian Country of Lewis and Clark’s Missouri River expedition. Bodmer’s work is very detailed and shows the Native Americans on their lands before the mass arrival of the White man. Bodmer was the first artist to capture these images. I have seen several times the extensive collection of Bodmer’s at the Joslyn Museum in Omaha but never the Folio. Unbelievable!
In contrast to Russell and Remington, Bodmer’s work focused on the period before the White man. Remington and Russell focused on the period twenty years after the Civil War when the West was being won and the frontier being tamed. Interestingly Frembling noted (and I had never known this) the U S government planned the decimation of the buffalo herds as a tactic to tame and conquer the Plains Indians.
Our tour of the highlights of the permanent collection began promptly. Our docent spent the first five minutes on a tribute to Amon Carter the Museum’s benefactor. The next fifteen minutes were devoted to Remington and Russell. She noted both were focused on cowboys and horses. Russell’s paintings and drawings most often include very blue skies and Montana in the background; Remington’s includes men, horses, action, and occasionally some depiction or reference to the U. S. Calvary.
Remington’s family were early settlers in America arriving in 1637, Remington’s father was a Union Colonel in the Cavalry in the Civil War. He had a notable family bloodline. He was related to famed Indian portrait artist George Catlin, cowboy sculptor Earl Bascom, mountain men Jedediah Smith, “Doc” Newell, and Jonathan Warner. His cousin was Eliphalet Remington founder of the Remington Arms Company. Most notable in his bloodline was President George Washington.
Frederick Remington was an Easterner from New York. He was born in 1861 at Canton, New York near the St. Lawrence River. After the Civil War the family moved to Bloomington, Illinois for four years. They returned east to Ogdensburg, New York. Remington was a poor student with modest ambition but a great artistic talent. He briefly studied art at Yale University but dropped out to pursue his wanderlust of camping out in the Old West.
After his sojourn in the West, Remington returned to New York and established his studio in New Rochelle, New York on Long Island Sound. What put Remington on the map was his work as an illustrator. He created drawings of the old west for magazines like Harper’s Weekly. He quickly moved to bigger pieces painting in oil and then he began sculpting. Many of his paintings were very large like “Dash For the Timber” a prize piece at the Carter. Remington did some of his best work showing men and horses in “Big Art. “
Surprising to me was that his first attempt at sculpture was his famous “Bronco Buster”. Of the first twenty-one original castings, the Carter has one, one resides in the Oval Office at the White House, and there is another original at Theodore Roosevelt’s home at Sagamore Hill. The Roosevelt casting was a gift to TR from his Rough Riders. From a second sand casting mold there were 54 of the bronze Bronco Buster produced. From these one resides in the Joslyn Museum in Omaha a bequest of N. P. Dodge.
Later in his life, several of his works took on what I call an impressionist flavor. Frederic Remington’s epitaph (at his request) says “I Knew the Horse.”
The Carter did not officially make the name change to include American Art until 2010 though the collection had been trending in that direction for three to four decades. Besides collecting Russell’s and Remington’s, Mr. Carter also had an extensive collection of Texas Folk Art, Lithography, 19th Century Photographs and Sculptures. Included are paintings by Georgia O’Keefe, Charles Schreyvogel, William Robinson Leigh, William Harnett, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and the list goes on and on of beautiful stills, portraits, and landscapes. Other than the Remington’s my favorite in the permanent collection is “Parson Weem’s Fable” by Grant Wood. The collection of 19th Century photographs is one of the top six in Country.
My Fort Worth Civic Pride is showing – Our docent stopped in front of Thomas Eakins’s very famous painting, “The Swimming Hole” and told this fabulous story. The realist painting shows Eakins students skinny dipping in the river (Eakins has a selfie of him swimming in the water below his students). The painting is a prime example of Eakins depictions of the human anatomy. Eakins is recognized as one of America’s greatest artists and this painting is considered to be one of his most famous, certainly one of his top five. Thomas Eakins liked the painting and never sold it. He placed it in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For several years he had been a salaried Professor at the Pennsylvania Academy.
In about 1890 a group of Women in Fort Worth established the Fort Worth Art Association. Their purpose was promotion of fine art and culture in Cowtown. The Art Association years later built the Fort Worth Art Museum. About fifteen years ago it was torn town and the Art Association replaced it with the beautiful Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. “The Modern” is also located in the Cultural District. As the story goes, after Eakins death, his wife Susan took possession from the Pennsylvania Museum and subsequently put “The Swimming Hole” up for sale. The ladies in Fort Worth purchased it in 1925 for $750. Since they had no display place of their own, they displayed it in the Fort Worth Public Library for many years until they had their own museum.
In about 1990 the Art Association received an offer from a New York City buyer for $10 million. Fort Worth did not want this significant American painting to get away. Consequently, the Carter Museum put $5 million into a consortium and raised the other $5 million from local art patrons and purchased “The Swimming Hole.”
On another Carter Museum related local historical note - Our docent told us when it became known that President Kennedy would be overnighting in Fort Worth during his trip to Texas in 1963, Amon Carter’s daughter, Ruth Carter Stevenson, arranged for seventeen of the Museum’s paintings to be placed into The President’s suite at the Hotel Texas. Mrs. Stevenson who was the driving force at the Carter Museum and one of the nation’s leading supporters of the arts also served on the prestigious Board of Directors at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D C. The morning after the President and Mrs. Kennedy’s stay, the President called Mrs. Stevenson to thank her for arranging for the great art in their rooms. That was the last telephone call President Kennedy ever made.
After the tour, Harry and I rushed back to the inner sanctum to see more. The gracious Archivist, Mr. Frembling ushered us back to the stacks where I swear the Shroud of Turin might have been stored. It was unbelievable. They had boxes upon boxes, shelves upon shelves of personal letters, artwork, books and original documents of the Old West. Many of these unique items were gifted to the Museum when a family no longer had anyone to leave them to or wanted to be assured they would be cared for and archived for historical research. It was unbelievable. Of particular interest to me was the J P Morgan sponsored complete 20 volume folio on the North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis. With free reign, I could spend a year in those storage rooms.
Half the day was gone and we still had to make yet another barbecue stop and two more museums to get to.
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