13 MAY 8-14, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Covering the West BOOK A TRIP TO TRINIDAD TO SEE L’AMOUR BY MANCHESS AT THE A.R. MITCHELL MUSEUM. BY KYLE WAGNER The Old West clings to our imaginations like trail dirt on worn leather boots — persistent, comforting and caked with nostalgia for the experiences (real or not) that put it there. Those dusty dreams have remained cemented in the collective consciousness largely through the reverential imagery cre- ated over the decades by all manner of cre- atives, including authors like the late Louis L’Amour – arguably the most beloved of Western wordsmiths, based on the enduring popularity of the more than 400 self-titled “frontier stories” in short form and novels that he produced from the 1950s until his death at age eighty in 1988. L’Amour’s pulp-type tales featuring manly men chasing bad guys on horseback, skittish cattle roaming the open plain, and cowboy coffee served “hot, and black as the hinges of hell” has continued to inspire art- ists like Gregory Manchess, an award-win- ning illustrator who in the 1990s was asked by L’Amour’s son, writer and art director Beau L’Amour, to reinterpret the book covers for a more modern audience, resulting in a collection of more than sixty oil paintings. Now, 46 of those paintings are on display in the larg- est exhibit (and sale) of L’Amour art ever offered in one place. L’Amour by Manchess opened May 2 at the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art in Trinidad. Man- chess pitched the idea last year dur- ing another illustra- tor show at what’s locally known as “the Mitch” – a 1906 building that showcases the iconic, early-1900s Western- themed paintings of Trinidad native Arthur Roy Mitchell along with Indigenous and Hispanic folk art in this scenic, art-obsessed little city that still feels like a cowtown in all the best ways (and also boasts some of the best gravel bike trails and parks in the state). The show includes some of Manchess’ favorites – including Kilkenny, Milo Talon and a few from the Hopalong Cassidy books – along with several from the legendary Sackett series (the moody and evoca- tive The Daybreakers andThe Sackett Brand among them), which L’Amour wrote during visits to Durango’s his- toric Strater Hotel, which still has L’Amour’s desk in Room 222. (L’Amour also bought a thousand acres west of Durango in the 1960s.) “I run into people all the time who still know the L’Amour books, even after all these years,” Manchess says. “They tell me, ‘Oh, my god, my dad read all of those when I was a kid,’ or, ‘My mom still reads them.’ And then as they get older, they go back and read them to fi nd a way to reconnect with their parents. “They’re like epi- sodes of Bonanza,” he adds. “When you read his books, you can kind of re- visit this time period that so many people hold so dear, this mythical time that’s so specifi c to this country, but that also had this authen- ticity that brings up a lot of emotion for many of us. And that narrative translates really well, I think, to being captured in an oil painting.” At seventy, Man- chess – who splits his time between Long Island and Fort Thomas, Ken- tucky, in the 1870s house he grew up in, which he recently purchased – has had a storied career, as well. His artwork has been featured on postage stamps, movie posters and advertising campaigns, as well as in magazines such as National Geographic, The Atlantic and Smithsonian. His graphic novel, Above the Timberline, was published in 2017; a year later, he illustrated all the chap- ters of the book seen in the Coen brothers’ fi lm The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Last year, Manchess was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, and he teaches il- lustration at the Smart School and elsewhere. “What’s funny about teaching now is that when I was in school, I really wanted to paint in oil, but my teachers were all say- ing that oil painting was dead,” Manchess says. “First, I had been told I didn’t have talent in high school and that I was never gonna get into the art schools, but fi nally, one school did take me, and then they told me the kind of painting I was passionate about was dead. I was really angry about that, because I wanted to paint in oil in this specifi c style, like Howard Pyle did. I was deep into that. Those Brandywine guys infl uenced me so much from my childhood through art school. I was emulating what they were doing, because I just thought the paintings were wonderfully done.” In fact, the Brandywine School style – whose storybook method of painting focuses on human fi gures in motion as they relate to a narrative, pioneered by Pyle – wound up being the reason Manchess became the modern-day L’Amour illustrator, following in the brush strokes of early cover artists such as Howard Terpning, Frank McCarthy and Louis S. Glanzman. In the early ’90s, Manchess had sold a title page illustration to the Louis L’Amour Western Magazine, a short-lived publication dedicated to discovering and promot- ing new Western fi ction – one of Beau L’Amour’s many projects, along with trying to change his fa- ther’s book covers to ap- peal to new readers. “Beau was looking for someone from the Bran- dywine School, someone who could pull off a more modern feel,” Manchess explains. “Beau had spe- cifi c ideas about how he wanted to update the cov- ers, and we just clicked, got along instantly. We very quickly nailed down a process that really worked between us, and it helped that Beau had been so familiar with all of the books since he was a child.” Because of the sheer number of books, Man- chess rarely had time to read them. Instead, the process involved Beau talking through the stories with him. He then came up with thumbnail sketches to start working through what would capture the feel of each. Beau would take a look, and then based on his feedback, Manchess would create larger drawings, and they would nar- row the choices down to two or three. After another chat about the options, Beau would know which one was right. “While we were trying to update the covers, we were facing backward in time,” Manchess recalls. “Not just to the 1860s, but to painters like Pyle and N.C. Wyeth. So we were emulating what those guys had pro- duced as American illustration. We took that and tried to be truthful to the history of it.” They also endeavored to be accurate in the details, sourcing things like cowboy hats, tack, boots and more to refl ect those that had been used in the time of the sto- ries. “You know, back in the ‘60s when the original artists were doing these covers, they would have fl at hats, like you see in the old TV shows,” Manchess says. “Well, that’s not correct to the time – those guys back in the 1800s had rounded dome hats. They wore specifi c things like wrist guards and boot shafts, and they tucked their pants into their boots. They defi nitely didn’t dress like they did in Bonanza.” Unique to illus- CULTURE continued on page 14 KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS Gregory Manchess was asked by L’Amour’s son to reinterpret his father’s book covers for a more modern audience in the 1990s. A.R. MITCHELL MUSEUM OF WESTERN ART Gregory Manchess painted more than sixty Louis L’Amour book covers. COURTESY OF GREGORY MANCHESS
