BNSF News

DuMond's "Long Trail": Artwork Contrasts Modes of Western Transport

2010-03-15

Frederick Melville DuMond's The Long Trail, circa 1910, is a dramatic painting with a markedly different depiction of a horse-drawn stagecoach in a Western landscape.

First, DuMond rejects the traditional long-view composition in which the stagecoach is set off in the distance. Instead he closely crops the picture with photographic perspective. Rather than placing the viewer on a parallel plane, DuMond positions the viewer below grade, perhaps down a rugged ravine, looking up as the careening stage flies by and kicks up dust on the narrow trail. Second, the turquoise green sky suggests that the travelers are making their way in the cool of the night rather than in the searing daytime heat of the desert Southwest.

In addition to these departures, DuMond provides an ironic narrative by placing a mounted Native American impatiently waiting just behind the coach, pulling a travois and unable to pass on the narrow trail. DuMond injects humor with the mighty, modern stagecoach delaying the native inhabitant and his ancient form of transport.

DuMond was born in Rochester, N.Y., in 1867 to French parents. After he graduated from Rochester's Mechanics Institute, DuMond continued his art studies in Paris at the Académie Julien. With his brother artist Frank Vincent DuMond, he operated a summer art school in Crecy for six years. After more teaching in Italy and at the Art Students League in New York City, DuMond moved to California in 1910 and taught at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design.

He soon settled on a ranch in Monrovia, Calif., where he became a lauded painter of the Mojave Desert and other natural wonders and people of the Southwest until his death in 1927.

The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway bought several paintings of stagecoaches to capitalize on the popular nostalgia of the earlier Western frontier that had already vanished with the coming of the railroads, settlers and commerce. Paintings of stagecoach travel were also subtle reminders of the danger and discomfort travel through the West once entailed versus the safety and comfort of the Santa Fe's luxurious passenger service.

The Long Trail can be found at Fort Worth headquarters in the second floor hall of the Operations Office Building. Earlier BNSF News articles about the BNSF collection can be found by searching for "BNSF Works of Art" from employee.bnsf.com.

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