You'll see the West's first true cowboys in Charles
Christian Nahl's Vaqueros Roping a Steer. These
cattle herders originally came to California from
Mexico and were renowned for their skills on horseback.
Note Nahl's depiction of horses in a flying gallop, painted—
as most artists did at that time—with front and rear
legs fully extended. Ironically, just a few years
later, it was the artist's own neighbor in San Francisco,
the photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who would
prove that Nahl's portrayal was inaccurate. Through
the use of pioneering stop-motion photography, Muybridge
showed that although horses' legs do leave the ground
when they gallop, their legs are tucked under, not
extended. Nahl's subject may be very much of the New World,
but his techniques harken back to his classical
European training in his native Germany. This painting
clearly shows the florid, theatrical influences
of the Old Masters as well as the grandeur of 19th-century
European history paintings. Just below and to the
right, you'll find a very different treatment of
the vaqueros by British-born James Walker, who settled
in San Francisco in the late 1860s. Walker made California
Vaqueros nearly a decade after Nahl's, at a time when
real estate developers and railroad men were
eager to polish California's image. In this highly
formal painting, the two elegantly dressed central
figures more closely resemble upper-class equestrians
than hard-working, dusty cowmen. The formality
of the painting is enhanced by the symmetry in everything
from the horses' facial expressions to the cacti
in each corner of the composition.