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...

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