"It May Be Art But

When Idaho oldtimers last fortnight took a good look at the murals in Boise's new courthouse, they were fit to be tied. The murals, by R. G. Bartlett and Los Angeles WPA workers, showed a cabin on the Oregon Trail--with boarded gables and white New England picket fence; a sissy trapper standing by while an Indian seized his horse. "That may be good art but it isn't true to nature," yelped angry Probate Judge John Jackson. "Any trapper who let an Indian get that close to his horse would be ostracized as unworthy of the guild."

In Amarillo, Tex., similar sounds were heard. As the murals for the Amarillo post office took shape, Texas cowhands said some mighty sharp things about WPAinter Julius Woeltz. Artist Woeltz had painted cowboys loading unbranded cattle into a boxcar, had left out a shipping pen (cattle are never loaded from the open range), showed a lasso dangling from the wrong side of a saddle. His most glaring mistake was substitution of English-style saddles for Western. Said a bystander: "You couldn't never git a cowboy on one of them postage-stamp things."

Muralist Woeltz took the criticism in good part, corrected the mistakes as best he could. But one oldtimer remained unsatisfied, remarked, "Them cattle is mighty clean." Said Woeltz: "It has just come a rain."

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