E. S. Paxson Makes Generous Offer To Paint Pictures In Courthouse – 1912
E. S. Paxson Makes Generous Offer To Paint Pictures In Courthouse
Woman’s Club Begins Campaign for Removal of Objectionable Paintings From County Building and Receives Liberal Co-operation From Famous Local Artist.
The movement toward replacing the pseudo-pictures in the county courthouse with paintings truly typical of Montana pioneer life has at last become a movement in fact as well as in name. The Woman’s club has taken the matter up and started it moving in earnest. Some of the members of the club, whose sense of the artistic is keen enough to protest against wooden-legged oxen and Irish Indians, have been working quietly with the county commissioners and with E. S. Paxson until they have secured the artist’s consent to fill the panels in the courthouse corridor with real pictures for a maximum price of $1,200, possibly for $1,000. Mr. Paxson has gone even farther in offering to let the county put off the payments, in case the treasury will not stand the expense just now, for one, two or even three years.
This is a liberal offer indeed and Mr. Paxson has made it simply because he is interested enough to dislike the idea of having such pictures as now decorate the courthouse remain in the halls of Missoula county’s principal public building. And there are plenty of people who feel with him and who welcome the chance to have them replaced by paintings of an artist with Mr. Paxson’s technical ability and thorough knowledge of the west and western people. No one who ever saw an Indian or a prairie schooner can look at those pictures in the courthouse halls without either laughing at their unfitness or swearing at the dauber who put them there. The pictures are without a bit of artistic or historical merit. The figures are stiff and unlifelike; the scenes have not the slightest pretense of accuracy or local appropriateness. Duncan McDonald saw them once. He got inside the courthouse door; took one look at the Noah’s Ark ox train and the caricatures of his race and went “up in the air.” He was so disgusted that he nearly refused to register, though it was the first time during his 63 years in Montana that the government had extended to him the rights of citizenship. Everyone else who has looked at them with more than a passing glance has felt the same way. The pictures are a real disgrace to Missoula county. That they should have been placed in the courthouse when Missoula county has an artist of national reputation as a painter of western life is hard to understand.
But the Women’s club has begun the fight and has crystalized the general feeling of distaste into an active campaign for the removal of the sign-painter’s art from the courthouse. They propose to replace it with paintings by Mr. Paxson; paintings which will be truly representative of western Montana life and which will educate rather than offend the eyes of the hundreds of people who daily pass through the courthouse halls. Missoula people have never thoroughly appreciated the fact that Mr. Paxson is a remarkable artist with a reputation in the east that is far greater than at home. His pictures are noted for the accuracy with which they portray western people – cowboys, soldiers, Indians – and for the western spirit with which they are infused. Mr. Paxson has been commissioned to paint some of the historical panels for the state capitol; the people of Missoula county should see that similar recognition of his genius is made here. For better than half a century Mr. Paxson has lived and worked in the west. He has seen with his own eyes the development of the west from the time of the prospector and the Indian to the present day. He could paint a series of pictures for the courthouse which would be accurate and faithful and which would preserve for future generations as nothing else could do the spirit and action of pioneer days. Such a move would also constitute a formal recognition by his own people of Mr. Paxson’s genius; it would be the most fitting honor which could be given to the artist.
Now the chance is here. Mr. Paxson has made to the county commissioners an offer which is extremely generous. Such an opportunity to get rid of the smears which now disfigure the courthouse and at the same time replace them with paintings of real artistic value may never come again. The Woman’s club has done good work; it is up to the county to finish it up.
The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on March 17, 1912.
https://www.newspapers.com/image/175736249
The Missoula Art Museum featured several of Paxson’s paintings on their website at the following link:
http://www.missoulaartmuseum.org/files/documents/exhibits/PaxsonChacon.pdf