For two months Clevelanders have been strolling into the back parlor of the Messrs. Korner & Wood's handsome book and art emporium, to scrutinize some little white horses and little white men which experts told them were better than anything of their kind ever before produced in the U. S. Last fortnight Clevelanders strolled in again, to see the first translations of the little horses and men from plaster into bronze. They were told that they were observing the joint debut and triumph of the country's leading cowboy sculptor. They could well believe it.
Frederick Remington is dead (1909). For years he painted and modeled life on the Western plains, especially soldiers and Indians, after study at Yale and in New York. Charles Marion Russell is dead (1926). He had lived in Montana since the age of 15, a son of the saddle who knew most of his state from the Tetons to the Yellowstone, most of the cowmen from Great Falls to Miles City, most of the dodges of calves at branding time, steers on the range, cayuses at a rodeo. He modeled and painted the "puncher's" life so well that in 1925 the Montana Board of Education awarded him an honorary LL. D.
But Will James, another Great Falls boy who worked with "cow and horse outfits" from a tender age, who knew Sculptor Russell well and who has "seen 'em all," meaning the work of cowboy sculptors, is still thoroughly alive. He keeps himself so by writing and illustrating the life he knows best. And after viewing the little casts in Cleveland, Cowboy Artist Will James said slowly: "Today's the first day I've ever seen a real cowboy ridin' a real cowpony."
There is many a big cow ranch in north-central Florida and on one of these Hughlette Wheeler was raised. Never until September, 1925, did he have a piece of modeling clay in his hand. Last year, Cowboy Wheeler, aged 24, presented himself at the Cleveland School of Art for instruction. Later, in his cheerful Florida drawl, he told his publishers about his second day at school.
"They gave me some clay," he said, "and some flowers, and they told me to model the flowers. Well, li'l flowers are all right but Ah ain't got no interest in flowers, so Ah took mah clay home and made me a hoss, and ever since they been lettin' me make hosses."
Student Wheeler of the Cleveland Art School was virtually graduated the same day he matriculated. When they saw his first "hoss," his instructors recognized that he possessed instinctively, and could execute, most of the knowledge they could impart in a lifetime. With no model other than mental images of his favorite pony, "Morgan," and a long-legged, lean-jawed man in a gallon hat and leather chaparajos he worked up models full of tense horse-and-man action in which every muscle, strap and stretch of skin strained perfectly or lay in lifelike ease. So thoroughly did he know what he was about that of all the structural wires in eight groups of rearing, plunging, pawing horses and clinging or waving men, he did not have to alter a single bend or angle as originally made.