William R. Leigh (1866 - 1955)

In 1906, at the age of 40, William Robinson Leigh boarded a train headed for New Mexico, where he began to fulfill his lifelong dream to paint the American West. During the next fifty years, Leigh created hundreds of paintings of the West. He earned the title of the Sagebrush Rembrandt for his meticulous attention to detail, painstaking draftsmanship, skillful rendering of dazzling light, and unorthodox use of vivid color.