The Art and Life of Merritt Dana Houghton in the Northern Rockies, 1878–1919 by Michael A. Amundson (review)

Le résumé fourni par la source

Reviewed by: The Art and Life of Merritt Dana Houghton in the Northern Rockies, 1878–1919 by Michael A. Amundson Anthony Wood The Art and Life of Merritt Dana Houghton in the Northern Rockies, 1878–1919 Michael A. Amundson University of Wyoming Press, Laramie, 2023. $45.00 cloth. While many people across the West have marveled at reprints of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century birds-eye views of their communities, few give thought to the lives and careers of the artists who rendered those images and what their stories may reveal about "place-making" in the West. In his biography and annotated portfolio of Merritt Dana Houghton, historian Michael A. Amundson introduces the public to one of the more prolific and talented artists working in the Northern Rockies at the turn of the century. Amundson's thoughtful and descriptive account of Houghton's life and work has three major chapters in addition to an introduction and brief conclusion. In "Finding Vantage Points," readers follow Houghton from Michigan to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where Merritt and his wife Frances made their first western home in 1875. Over the next decade, Houghton moved across southern Wyoming; he alternately found work as a schoolteacher, superintendent, photographer, and somewhat uninspiring newspaperman. Though Houghton's newspaper failed, it was the first illustrated journal in the state and introduced the population of Wyoming to his skill and highlighted his commercial potential. In the late 1890s, the historian Charles Coutant hired Houghton to provide historical sketches of old forts and other landmarks for the first of three planned volumes of Wyoming's history. After the first and only volume appeared in 1899, Houghton acquired a reputation as a talented and imaginative artist. The second chapter, "The Grand Encampment Boom," captures Houghton after the turn of the century, then in his mid-to-late fifties, as he settled into the most prolific and profitable years of his career. Houghton's art became more focused on the scenic area around the small mining and smelting town of Grand Encampment, Wyoming. Amundson proves himself in this chapter to be a thoughtful and descriptive historian, showing how Houghton found his niche as an illustrator whose work was touted by property owners. Ranchers had already employed Houghton to provide commemorative and booster-related sketches of their properties, but the Grand Encampment era proved to many western industrialists the value Houghton had as a marketer and promoter. Art and art history lovers will relish Amundson's annotations and narratives around the major pieces that made up Houghton's two commercially successful books of 1904: A Portfolio of Wyoming Views and Views of Southern Wyoming. Amundson also documents Houghton's work as a sketch artist of ubiquitous bird's-eye views of towns and cities. Houghton's incredible view of Sheridan, Wyoming, is the most emblematic of these works, but cities such as Buffalo, Wyoming; Dillon, Montana; and Spokane, Washington, are also of note. Regarding these types of views, Amundson is correct to note the artist's skill. Sketching a city like Wallace, Idaho, from nearby hillsides was one thing, but Houghton's ability to imagine a real likeness of a place from above without an actual vantage point or the use of a hot-air balloon (as other artists sometimes employed at this time) attests to his talent. The final chapter follows Houghton as he and Frances move north through Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho before settling in Spokane in 1908. Tragically, the couple passed away during the influenza pandemic of 1918, and Amundson closes the book with a thoughtful reflection on the artist's life and the work of doing material and cultural history in the archive and during the present pandemic era. Like a work of art that only comes together as the final detailed marks are rendered by the artist, this biography saves its most important assessment for the very end, stating: "Houghton's work is inherently local in nature but regional in scope." Amundson is [End Page 81] primarily interested in what Houghton meant as an artist of western places in a very grounded sense. Though there is certainly much more the author could have written regarding the role that artists like...

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.