A Wild West Christmas

Nothing can displace visions of sugarplums a week before Christmas, but, always thinking outside the box, I propose Frederic Remington’s nocturnes as a Christmas complement. When I was in Fort Worth in September, I visited the Sid Richardson Museum and the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. Cowboys and cowgirls get Christmas, too, and the Richardson museum’s five nocturnes, though not all snowy things, are very, very beautiful. I filed them away for a counterintuitive Christmas piece. Richardson (1891–1959) was one of the giants of Texas’s oil business and culture. He collected nearly all the art at the museum.