William Herbert Dunton (otherwise known as Buck), Illustrator
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| William H. Dunton: Vaquero (1909); Briscoe Museum |
He stands, smiling, holding a lasso. One foot rests partially on his silver-trimmed Mexican saddle with its wide pommel, spread at his feet. His suede vaquero garb with decorated frogging and tall sombrero are very similar to an actual Mexican ranger's outfit from the Guerra collection displayed near the painting at the Briscoe Museum, as well as the sombrero, lasso and spurs below it. His pose, white teeth, straight black hair and olive complexion give him a raffish attractive aspect that is brought out even more so by the white background. Modulated only by its white brushstrokes, there is no ground line, only the signature of the artist, W Herbert Dunton at the bottom left.
This painting by Dunton was the cover design for the March,1909 issue of The Cavalier (not to be confused with the later, Playboy-like publication of the 1950's). The blank
expanse of background is occupied by the large blue title of the Magazine behind the figure and red publication information to the left.
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| Duncan Reynaldo as The Cisco Kid |
At the time he designed it, Dunton was one of the most in-demand illustrators of his era. During what cultural historians called "The Golden Age of Illustration"--approximately from 1850 to 1925--illustrators were highly thought of artists, and well paid too. Books of fiction featured lavish color pictures, and magazines had them as well. The artists would be given stories by the editors of such well-known weeklies and monthlies as Harper's, Scribner's, and Cosmopolitan, and a specified number of illustrations half and/or full-page for it, with a deadline to submit. The illustrator was expected to provide pictures to amplify and illuminate episodes in the text--much as we still see in children's books. Many illustrators also did serious paintings (think Winslow Homer and Childe Hassen for example). The illustrator was allowed to keep his or her original designs after they were used, exhibit and sell them, much as they did with their easel paintings. By Dunton's day, the method of reproduction was photomechanical, allowing the artist to do their originals in whatever medium they preferred. Dunton's were mainly oil on canvas, while Frederic Remington's "Hasty Intrenchment Drill in the United States Army, also in the Briscoe, done for Harper's Weekly in 1896, was in mixed media of pencil, pen and gouache on paper.
During most of this period, colored images for journals were mostly reserved for cover art; actual story illustrations were done in black and white. The Briscoe Museum collection has two more examples of Dunton's magazine work, and both were for half pages. The first of these, a half-page example also included three more half pages and one full-page that Dunton made for an issue of The Cosmopolitan (Vol. 41, #21) in 1910 to illustrate the story "Propriety Pratt, Hypnotist. A Demonstration That Dispelled 'Wolfville's' Doubts" by Alfred Henry Lewis. Lewis, a reporter and journalist, also wrote stories about the fictional western town of Wolfville, between 1893 and 1913. All of them were written in a sort of "old west" dialect, and this one was no exception. It concerned a rather dubious traveling hypnotist-showman, who was not having much success in his trade until he inadvertently managed to reveal a robber, complete with his loot.
As is characteristic of illustrations of the era, costumes and setting elements are meticulously researched and shown. In Dunton's case, the western elements are as authentic as possible to evoke the story--for Dunton, this would not have been difficult: he had spent years during his twenties working on ranches, hunting and living the cowboy life as it then existed. He probably had brought back authentic clothing and gear from those years to use as reference.
Without the caption, this picture is generic of American southwestern life at the time and could stand in as an opening shot in a western film for several decades to come as well as a lead-in into Lewis's Boggs tale (two of the other illustrations for the story are much more text-specific).
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| William Herbert Dunton: Battery of U.S. Field Artillery |
The other black and white oil sketch for a story, this time for Collier's Magazine and marked by the journal's stamp with additional editorial mark-up lines on the unpainted border of the canvas. This one has no identifying caption; the title "Battery of U.S. Field Artillery Going Into Action" being a descriptive afterthought for exhibition purposes. A group of military riders--at least seven of them--four on horseback and three on an artillery wagon to their rear, dash across stony desert, broken only by a yucca plant in the left foreground. The action is conveyed not only by the horses, but the riders, dominated by one in the foreground, his body thrown backwards and emphasized by his extended right arm with the quirt in his hands lengthening the diagonal even further, as well as the rushing riderless horse in front of him.
This is certainly a military theme and the landscape suggests the southwestern United States or Northwestern Mexico; does it possibly relate then to the Pancho Villa raid into Columbus New Mexico in 1916 and General Pershing's cavalry and artillery retaliatory expedition soon after? But the 1916 issues of Collier's extant show no such illustration for any story, although there are quite a number of photographs of the campaign in the issues of that year.
The dramatic action painting cries out for a caption, which would certainly help to explain the picture's message of military urgency. There is therefore a paradox here: the Red Dog illustration is more to set a mood rather than to narrate anything, while the "Battery of Field Artillery" is very narrative--but of what?
William Herbert Dunton's career had two distinct phases, that of a successful and prolific illustrator based on the east coast, the second as a serious easel painter who was a member of the Taos Association of Artists in New Mexico, where he lived after 1914, until he resigned from it in 1922, though he remained there until his death in 1936. This shift reflects the idea of the artist-as-illustrator as well as studio painter that existed before the famous Armory Show in New York in 1913, and the subsequent divorce of serious art from commercial artist after this time, when the term "illustrator" became increasingly more pejorative by critics and art historians. Since the serious artist relied on exhibitions and sales for a livelihood, it is not surprising to learn that during the last two decades of his life Dunton was obliged to live in straitened circumstances from the time that he moved west until his death in 1936, though he continued to do commissioned illustrations through the early 1920's to supplement his income, as well as commissioned portraits. The Briscoe Museum has none of Dunton's later paintings, which show his development away from narrative, but they are fully examined and analyzed by Michael Grauer in his biographical article for a Dunton retrospective exhibition at the Panhandle-Planes Historical Museum in 1991. A more recent retrospective of the artist and his paintings at the Harwood Art Museum in Taos and the Phoenix art museum, just ended its run in June, 2024.
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The entire story of "Propriety Pratt" with Dunton's five illustrations, can be read at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013738102&seq=21 There is also a second story, "Old Man Enright's Uncle. Wolfville Entertains a Disciple of Munchausen" by the same author, also illustrated by Dunton, in a later issue of the same year.
The most accessible study that best explores Dunton, his life and the complexity of his career is W.H.Dunton and American Art, by Michael Grauer, and can be found reprinted at https://tfaoi.org/aa/4aa/4aa97.htm. It formed an introductory essay for a retrospective of the artist's work at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum on the campus of West Texas A&M University in Canyon Texas.
A lecture Michael R. Grauer about Dunton can be accessed on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU52OHzUd0w
There is also a monograph by Julie Schimmel, The Art and Life of W. Herbert Dunton 1878-1936), Austin, University of Texas Press, 1984.
