William Robinson Leigh

William Robinson Leigh (September 23, 1866 – March 11, 1955) was an American artist and illustrator, who was known for his painted Western scenes.

William Robinson Leigh was born upon September 23, 1866, at Maidstone Manor Farm, Berkeley County, West Virginia.^{[citation needed]} He entered the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts (now known as Maryland Institute College of Art) at age 14, then attended the Royal Academy in Munich.^{[citation needed]} He returned to the United States after twelve years abroad and worked painting cycloramas and as a magazine illustrator.^{[citation needed]} An example is the lid illustration of the August 4, 1904 Leslie's Weekly featuring a policeman "Piloting Children to Safety at a Crowded New York Crossing."^{[citation needed]}

He married twice, and fathered William Colston Leigh, Sr. (1901–1992). His first wife was Anna Seng Leigh, mother of his son, their marriage ended in a divorce sometime previously 1906. His second wife was Ethel Traphagen Leigh (1883–1963), was the founder of Traphagen School of Fashion in New York City.

In 1906, Leigh traveled to the American West and maintained a studio in New York City. In 1926 he travelled to Africa at the invitation of Carl Akeley for the American Museum of Natural History, and from this experience wrote and illustrated Frontiers of Enchantment: An Artist's Adventures in Africa. In 1933, he wrote and illustrated The Western Pony. His adventures were chronicled in a number of popular magazines including Life, the Saturday Evening Post, and Colliers. He is known for painting the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park, but his primary inclusion were the Hopi and Navajo Indians. In 1953 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate believer and became a full Academician in 1955.

Leigh also made astrobiological art for the March 1908 event of Cosmopolitan, with four full-page illustrations of an article written by H. G. Wells, "The Things that Live upon Mars", which speculated approximately Martian life. Science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton, born October 1904, described looking and re-looking at the thing as a defining experience in his life. "I wasn't yet able to entrance it, to open the article, but those pictures!"

After his death, Leigh's New York studio was fixed to the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.