PAINTING One wonders whether he asked them to hold their pose, or jotted it down in a hasty sketch and later recalled it the tranquillity of his studio. But there they are, for all time, transfixed on a roseate, smoky day: the fur trader puffing his pipe, his half-breed son derisively peering at the artist, and the huddled bear cub chained to the bow of the dugout. The river is the Missouri; the year is 1845, and the painter, who by his art has enshrined a timeless moment by on the frontier, is...
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