The Mentor: Painters of Western Life, Vol 3, Num. 9, Serial No. 85, June 15, 1915

This 1915 issue of The Mentor magazine captures a pivotal moment in American cultural memory, when the frontier had just closed and artists were already looking back at what it meant. Arthur Hoeber profiles four painters who defined how a nation imagined its Western past: Frederic Remington, whose vigorous scenes of cowboys and Native Americans became iconic; Charles M. Russell, who lived among his subjects and painted them with uncommon intimacy; Charles Schreyvogel, whose depictions of army life resonated with a public hungry for frontier drama; and E. Irving Couse, who found stillness in Pueblo Indian settlements. What emerges is not merely an art historical document but a period portrait of how early 20th-century America chose to remember the West, even as railroads, settlement, and the Great War reshaped the nation. The text carries both reverence for these artists and an unmistakable nostalgia for a world that existed only in their canvases. For readers interested in American art, the mythology of the West, or the way eras are preserved and transformed, this brief volume offers a fascinating lens into a nation constructing its own legend.