The beauty of the Southwest is subtle, mysterious, elemental. We who live in it have long silently felt it — the eternal character of these vast spaces, silent, but vibrant with life and color-earth masses on which man through the ages has wrought no change nor ever can; and it in all, of it all, our people. . . . We know of nothing finer than humanity — nothing greater than the spirit of man striving to be in harmony with the forces around him. —Edgar L. Hewett, 1918 As director of the Museum of New Mexico nearly a century ago, Edgar L. Hewett eloquently described the allure of the Southwest and the spirit of its people, qualities many of America's best painters captured in grand detail. Exhibited here are several of the finest examples of figurative painting of the American West. In this exhibition, works by Walter Ufer, Victor Higgins, John Marin, Robert Henri, Frank Tenney Johnson, Joseph H. Sharp, and others are grand in skill and often in scale. Private collectors have generously loaned several pictures to this exhibition, sharing works that have been privately held for decades. The Owings Gallery celebrates not only the painters of the American West but their subjects as well; for us, these are the grand figures of the American West.