Modernist
WINOLD REISS (1886–1953)
Frenchy Rivière, 1928
Pastel on Whatman board, 29 1/4 x 21 1/4 in.
Signed (at lower left): WINOLD / REISS; and titled (on verso), “FRENCHY RIVIERE” / Property of / Louis W. Hill / c/o G.N.RY. / St. Paul, Minn.
RECORDED: “Wonderful Waterton,” The Lethbridge Herald, August 30, 1928, p.4 // Jeffrey C. Stewart, Winold Reiss: An Illustrated Checklist of His Portraits (Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, 1990), p. 40
EXHIBITED: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota, February–September 1934, American Indian Portraits: Winold Reiss, no 75 as “H. A. Riviere / Celebrated Guide, Waterton Lakes Nat’l Park”
EX COLL.: Louis W. Hill, St. Paul, Minnesota; private collection, Arizona, around 1990, and by descent to the present
On August 30, 1928, The Lethbridge Herald (Alberta, Canada) informed its readers that “Winold Reiss, noted portrait painter of New York City” was a visitor at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton commissioned to make
a portrait in oils of H. “Frenchy” Riviere, old time guide and rancher of the Picher Creek district who at present maintains a summer saddle horse outfit stationed at the forks of Pass Creek. The work has been ordered from Mr. Reiss by Louis W, Hill, chairman of the board of directors of the Great Northern Railway. (“Wonderful Waterton: Noted Portrait Painter of New York, Paints Indian Types Among Bloods…”, p. 4).
Winold Reiss, the artist, was the immigrant son of a German artist. Henri Frederick Benoit Arnous “Frenchy” de Rivière, the sitter, born in Normandy, France, to a family with aristocratic roots, was a rancher, game warden, and outdoor guide. Louis W. Hill, the patron, was the Yale-educated son of James J. Hill, founder of the Great Northern Railway and nicknamed the “Empire Builder.” Reiss, Riviere, and Hill came together united by a love of the rugged Rocky Mountains of Montana and Alberta, Canada, and of its native people, the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Reiss’s portrait of Frenchy Riviere bears witness to the confluence of the lives of these three men.
Henri Frederick Benoit Arnous “Frenchy” de Rivière (1867–1956) was another, a legendary character in Alberta, Canada. Accounts of his early life are sketchy and contradictory. “Frenchy” was born in Paris, France, in 1867 to Henri Guillaume Arnous de Riviere (1828–1909), a French aristocrat, and Emily James Blount (1841–1917), the daughter of Frederick Blount, a wealthy Mobile, Alabama lawyer. Their initial courtship in Mobile in 1858 resulted in a scandal reported in newspapers all over the country involving charges by Frederick Blount of bigamy (Henri), kidnapping (of Emily by her mother) and mental illness (Mrs. Blount). De Riviere returned to France, the Blounts to Mobile, and, by 1865 all matters had been resolved and the couple married in Paris. The upshot, to this day, are conflicting accounts with differing facts as to the circumstances of the elder de Rivière’s life, although there is ample reason to doubt his multiple grandiose stories. In 1876, Emily left her philandering and extravagant husband and, with her two youngest children, returned to Mobile to live with her parents. Henri Guillaume de Rivière died in France in 1909, apparently visiting his wife periodically in his later years. Emily died in 1917 in Mobile, having mostly exhausted her financial resources, but identified on her tombstone by her children Sabine and Henri as “Baroness de Rivière.”
“Frenchy” as he chose to be known, traveled west to San Francisco, and by 1883 was a cowboy in Alberta, Canada. In 1894, Riviere and Nellie Gladstone (1877–1940) married in Alabama. Nellie was the granddaughter of a Blackfeet woman and a Scots immigrant. Frenchy and Nellie had eleven children, ten of whom survived. Riviere took pride in his family’s Metis lineage. As was the case with his father, Frenchy’s self-reports as to his career cannot be entirely trusted. He is said to have worked as a guide in the Klondike Gold Rush (around 1897). He made a career as a rancher and mountain man. His position as a Game Warden for the Province of Alberta, from at least 1906 until 1928 can be independently verified. At his ranch near Pincher Creek, Rivière tamed horses for the Royal Mounted Police and bred and trained dogs. The latter activity led to a stint in Hollywood, (also independently verified) where his dogs played roles in the 1925 film version of Jack London’s adventure tale, White Fang, while Rivière was employed as a technical director. and stuntman double. In 1927, Louis Hill hired Rivière to work as an outdoor guide for guests at the Prince of Wales Hotel. With his encyclopedic knowledge of the terrain, its people and its wildlife, Rivière was overdetermined for the position. Thus, it was that in the summer of 1928 both Winold Reiss and Frenchy Rivière found themselves in the employ of Louis Hill.
