Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

Big Spring artist H.W. Caylor
June 26, 2002

On a visit to the Heritage Museum in Big Spring, a painting by Harvey Wallace Caylor caught my eye. The Dry Waterhole depicts a prospector with two loaded burros abjectly slumped in the bottom of an arroyo. In front of the prospector is a shovel half buried in a pit he has dug. Next to him is a pick, an empty bucket, and an array cooking utensils. Vultures swirl in the sky behind the man and a half-buried buffalo skull can be seen in the foreground.

Western historical art is currently quite popular. Caylor’s artistic career spanned several decades dating from the 1880s until the 1920s. Along with Charlie Russell and Frederick Remington, H.W. Caylor can be considered a founding father of the genre. It adds to my Llano Estacado chauvinism to know that Harvey Wallace Caylor spent his career painting our corner of Texas.

Caylor’s paintings are a vivid record of the fabric of the landscape at the time of settlement. I purchased a book published by the Heritage Museum that contains 52 Caylor prints, and have since spent a number of hours contemplating the images. On one of the 100-degree days recently, I spent part of the afternoon daytripping in my mind, using his paintings as the vehicle. I amused myself trying to determine if I had been to the exact place of the drawing, or if I could remember a place similar to the location portrayed.

One of the most striking perceptions that the artist conveyed is the portrayal of the landscape in other droughts almost as severe as the present one. The Cowboy’s Prayer seems to a simple portrait at first glance: a kneeling cowboy with head bowed, his hat on the ground in front of him, and his horse standing behind him. In the far distance is a windmill and a clump of trees, and even further is the caprock escarpment below a setting sun boring through yet another thunderhead dissipating before any rain has fallen. Clumps of backlit gray sand sage emerge from the hotly glowing bare ground which evokes a physical response in me. I feel the heat of the day, the heat that the praying cowboy felt. And somehow, feeling the heat, I can feel the cowboy’s despair.

In contrast, Chuck Wagon, on display for many years at the First National Bank in Big Spring, portrays the promise of the west Texas landscape. Set at a bend of the Pecos River near Fort Lancaster, a trail herd has been bedded down after crossing the river. The remuda is watering in the shallows of the crossing, while the cook has begun supper. The valley is filled with lush grasses, and two big groves of live oaks border the river bank. Cowboys tend both the “cavvy” and the cattle herd. In the far distance, beyond the mesas along the river, is a huge thunderhead, and the pink light of sundown glows on rock and cloud alike. Caylor uses subtle shades of blues and purples and pastel shades to reveal a deep love of the crepuscular hours of the Llano.

Another painting, Lucien Wells Ranch, depicts a moist spring scene. Herefords dot the slopes of Johnson Draw below the ranch buildings, speckling the iridescent chartreuse of new growth. In April of 2000, a series of thunderstorms dumped up to ten inches of rain in one day in this area of northwestern Glasscock County. A playa near the scene depicted in the painting still held almost a square mile of shallow water this spring. Of interest in the painting are what appear to be junipers along the north facing slope, and prickly pear and yucca along the south facing slope of the draw. Juniper is found in rocky soils along the escarpment of the Llano Estacado on slopes that are too sparsely vegetated for fire to reach the “cedars.” I have never been to the site so the junipers shown growing on gentle slopes is a detail that stimulates my curiosity. The Lucien Wells Ranch is famous among students of west Texas windmilling, for in the late 1880’s the installation of the first windmill in the region drew folks from miles around to see the new technology in action.

Big Spring historian, Joe Pickle, wrote the introduction to the book of Caylor plates. Along with Paul Patterson of Crane, and Clayton Williams, Sr. of Fort Stockton, Mr. Pickle is part of the grand triumvirate of west Texans that have done the most to pass on the warp and woof of our region’s past. Mr. Pickle quotes J. Frank Dobie after he visited Caylor’s wife, Florence, following the artist’s death: “There should be… a representative collection of his work preserved for the delight of people who take pleasure in and are edified by simple, sincere, and beautiful pictures interpretative of their own land.”

The Heritage Museum owns a number of Caylor’s works. Most of the rest of the extant work is in private hands, in many cases owned by the heirs of the cattle barons that commissioned much of his art. I am deeply appreciative of the book the museum put together. I hope some enterprising soul can gain permission to reproduce the paintings as prints, as well. Every student in this region should spend some time observing and learning the details of Caylor’s work.

I would love to have a print of his The Last Buffalo hanging on the wall at the Sibley Nature Center. I can feel the buffalo lifting himself up out of the buffalo wallow, heavy with mud and water, his muscles powerfully straining, and hear the water splashing with great sucking, slurpy sounds. The emotive power of art that depicts one’s own bioregion is a necessary part of a paisano’s experience.