Mountain-Chaser

Zestful, grey-bearded Boardman Robinson is best known for his murals in Manhattan, Washington, points west. But like Winslow Homer, John Sloan, many another U. S. artist, he first spent long years illustrating newspapers and magazines. Last week a show of 50 drawings and water colors he has done in the last quarter-century went on display in Manhattan's Walker Galleries. Artist Robinson's first exhibit in a decade, it gave youngsters a chance to see what their elders already knew: that for spirit, satire and sound draftsmanship, none of his murals can touch his early sketches and cartoons.

Artist Robinson was born in Nova Scotia in 1876, son of a sea captain who sailed round the world six times. He studied art in Boston and Paris, later did smartchart layouts for Vogue, cartoons for the New York Tribune, caricatures for The Masses. The Walker show keeps track of his life since 1915: drawings from a World War I trip to Russia with John Reed; satires on the Versailles Peace Conference; English sketches made while he cartooned for the London Outlook in the early '20s; studies for murals; illustrations for Dostoevski's novels.

Since 1930, energetic Artist Robinson has taught at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. From this period date his drawings of dude ranches, rodeos and the Rocky Mountains. He finds the Rockies hardest to draw. "The minute I look at a mountain it seems to move, both upward and toward me," says he. "You have something that is really going places. You have to be quick to catch it."

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