Gutzon and Lisa bought a little house among the orange groves in Sierra Madre, near the base of the mountains back of Pasadena, not far from where the Santa Anita race track now stands. “Lucky” Baldwin, who had a horse ranch on land that included the site of the race track, was a great friend and allowed Gutzon to use his horses as models. Gutzon loved this place. His favorite subjects for sculpture were horses, and he never tired of looking at them. Mrs. Frémont, after seeing his equestrian casts and drawings at his studio in 1889, summed up his future with the gift of prophecy: “The boy is spirited. Here is one sculptor who will ride to fame on horseback!” That wasn’t quite true, but it was near enough. Within the year he was moving. And never thereafter did he recognize the existence of anything that could hold him back. CHAPTER FIVE _OVERSEAS ART_ Gutzon left California in 1890 accompanied by his wife and forty unsold canvases. He was fairly happy. He had made a little money, he had learned something about art and he had a growing circle of friends in California. On the other hand, he gave little evidence that he might be something other than one more simple art student from the Pacific coast. That is what makes his progress remarkable. He stopped in Omaha to visit with his father and, almost unaccountably, left a pile of his canvases with a Mr. Leininger, a dealer and patron of art. It is a little difficult now to identify or appraise these works. This is a pity, for, good or bad, expensive or cheap, they all seem to have found somebody who loved them. They never came back to haunt his garret, nor, for that matter, did the ones we are told he sold “at an exhibition in New York.” There is little known about the “exhibition in New York” except that Mrs. Frémont, the general’s widow, had been informed of it. She wrote a note to the one person in New York who might be able to give a lift to the young artist. And that’s how Gutzon met Theodore Roosevelt, then Police Commissioner, who became a lasting friend. Through some similar effort Gutzon also met Collis P. Huntington, one of the builders of the Southern Pacific railroad. Their encounter would be of no interest here save for the example it gave of the young man’s purpose and directness and of his confidence in himself. Huntington, impressed by Gutzon’s work and charm as well as his friends, wanted to know what he could do to help him. Gutzon shook his head and smiled. “Nothing,” he said. “When I get through with this exhibition I’m going to Paris to study art.” This was something new to Huntington--as it would have been to any art patron in New York. “I am amazed,” he said. “Almost nobody comes to see me that doesn’t want me to do something for them.” He bowed and went away and Gutzon never saw him again. * * * * *