WEBVTT - Some title

00:03.000 --> 00:06.600
You'll see the West's first true cowboys in Charles

00:06.600 --> 00:11.000
Christian Nahl's Vaqueros Roping a Steer. These

00:11.000 --> 00:13.700
cattle herders originally came to California from

00:13.700 --> 00:16.900
Mexico and were renowned for their skills on horseback.

00:16.900 --> 00:21.900
Note Nahl's depiction of horses in a flying gallop, painted—

00:21.900 --> 00:25.600
as most artists did at that time—with front and rear

00:25.600 --> 00:29.500
legs fully extended. Ironically, just a few years

00:29.500 --> 00:32.900
later, it was the artist's own neighbor in San Francisco,

00:32.900 --> 00:35.500
the photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who would

00:35.500 --> 00:39.000
prove that Nahl's portrayal was inaccurate. Through

00:39.000 --> 00:42.500
the use of pioneering stop-motion photography, Muybridge

00:42.500 --> 00:45.600
showed that although horses' legs do leave the ground

00:45.600 --> 00:48.700
when they gallop, their legs are tucked under, not

00:48.700 --> 00:53.000
extended. Nahl's subject may be very much of the New World,

00:53.000 --> 00:56.000
but his techniques harken back to his classical

00:56.000 --> 00:59.900
European training in his native Germany. This painting

00:59.900 --> 01:02.900
clearly shows the florid, theatrical influences

01:02.900 --> 01:06.300
of the Old Masters as well as the grandeur of 19th-century

01:06.300 --> 01:11.400
European history paintings. Just below and to the

01:11.400 --> 01:13.800
right, you'll find a very different treatment of

01:13.800 --> 01:17.600
the vaqueros by British-born James Walker, who settled

01:17.600 --> 01:22.300
in San Francisco in the late 1860s. Walker made California

01:22.300 --> 01:26.500
Vaqueros nearly a decade after Nahl's, at a time when

01:26.500 --> 01:29.200
real estate developers and railroad men were

01:29.200 --> 01:32.900
eager to polish California's image. In this highly

01:32.900 --> 01:36.200
formal painting, the two elegantly dressed central

01:36.200 --> 01:39.600
figures more closely resemble upper-class equestrians

01:39.600 --> 01:43.100
than hard-working, dusty cowmen. The formality

01:43.100 --> 01:46.100
of the painting is enhanced by the symmetry in everything

01:46.100 --> 01:49.100
from the horses' facial expressions to the cacti

01:49.100 --> 01:50.900
in each corner of the composition.