WILLIAM R. LEIGH
Reading edition
Monograph Number Six in The Mentor Reading Course
As the Irish would say, the best way to tell about a man is to let him tell about himself. Mr. Leigh, who was born in West Virginia in 1866, has been well known for years as a magazine and book illustrator, and has lately come into a new renown as a painter of great western pictures. He tells his own story in a very simple, straightforward way:
“On my father’s plantation my earliest recollections,” he says, “are of drawing animals on slate or cutting them out of paper. For one of the latter I was awarded a prize of a dollar at a county fair, when four or five years old. I began drawing from nature at ten, and at twelve was awarded $100 by the great art collector, Mr. Corcoran, of Washington, after he had seen a drawing I had made of a dog. At fourteen I went to Baltimore and studied in the Maryland Institute for three years. I got first awards each year in the school, and in the winter of the third year was appointed teacher of drawing in the night school. At this time Mr. Corcoran gave me another $100.
“At seventeen I went to Munich, Bavaria, and worked one year under Professor Rouffe in the antique class, then two years under Professor Gyses in the nature class, and one year in what was called the ‘painting school,’ gaining three bronze medals altogether.
“At this time I was forced to go back to America and start to make my living. I spent a year in Baltimore, and saved up $300, with which I returned to Munich and the ‘painting school.’ In the middle of the winter when my funds were exhausted I went out looking for employment. It was not to be had for months; but during the following spring I was engaged by an artist to help him with some mural pictures. He did me out of almost everything I had, and left me destitute and in debt.
“However, sometime after this I got work with Philip Fleisch to help him on a cyclorama which represented the Battle of Waterloo. Fleisch found me useful enough to advance me sufficient money to get through the year so that I might help him the following season on another cyclorama. I entered the composition school of the Academy, painted a picture which gained me a silver medal, the highest award in the Academy, and an honorable mention in the Paris Salon. I sold that picture for $1,000, and it is now in Denver, Colorado. Five more years were occupied in painting five more cycloramas and some pictures in between, one of which gained me a second silver medal from the Academy.
“Overwork had by this time got me into bad health, and I returned to New York, where I soon recovered. I worked for several years in New York, painting many portraits, two of which hang in Washington Lee University, also many pictures both landscape and figure, and a great deal of magazine and book illustrating. Latterly I have turned my attention to the Far West in response to a desire that has been in me since boyhood.”
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 3. No. 9. SERIAL No. 85 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.