30 Favorites Celebrating 30 Years

30 Favorites Celebrating 30 Years

30 Favorites Celebrating 30 Years

Dear Friends,

T

hree decades ago, Mark Zaplin and I opened our gallery —yet another in a series of business partnerships that began when we were boyhood friends on the East Coast.

In those days, our entrepreneurial exploits probably appeared precocious, with our successes amounting to minor “feats of glory.” To those familiar with us, this new undertaking might have seemed like just another stop along the way. However, Mark and I knew better, taking seriously our decision to open Zaplin Lampert Gallery and recognizing that it would mean a significant investment of time and energy. This was a momentous step for us. Even so, my clearest memories of that time were of our enthusiasm and excitement. That ZLG would still be open thirty years on would not have surprised us back then. We chose as our home Santa Fe, one of the world’s

great art destinations, situating ourselves on Canyon Road, the city’s most artistic thoroughfare.

My goal in producing 30 Favorites Celebrating 30 Years is to share some of the most memorable artworks we’ve handled over the years, as well as some of the ZLG lore connected to them. It’s also an opportunity to tell the Zaplin Lampert Gallery story and to acknowledge my late business partner, Mark Zaplin, whose drive, vision, and creativity brought so much to this venture of ours. It won’t come as a surprise to those of you who knew Mark that a day rarely passes when I don’t think of him or when his name doesn’t come up in conversation here at the gallery. Part of his legacy is that ZLG continues, and I’m proud that we’ve been able to carry on the tradition of excellence Mark and I were striving for when we

opened in 1987. When all is said and done, it might even be considered our greatest “feat of glory.”

This catalogue also provides the ideal occasion to thank a number of people who are very important to me: • The enthusiastic collectors of art—in particular, those who have kindly permitted Zaplin Lampert Gallery to feature the treasured artworks in this publication. Words fall short in expressing our gratitude for their support over the last three decades.

• The conservators, framers, and appraisers—almost like adjunct ZLG staff—who have shared with us their invaluable expertise. The gallery couldn’t have succeeded without these partnerships.

• Our fellow gallery owners—kindred spirits and worthy friends—in the relatively small world of historical western art.

I believe that our healthy cooperation does much to further connoisseurship and scholarship.

• The extraordinarily talented artists Joe Anna Arnett and James Asher, the exceptions to Zaplin Lampert Gallery’s expressed focus (“Early Artists of Santa Fe, Taos, and the American West”). Joe Anna is a master of the still life and the plein-air landscape; Jim is an expert watercolorist. Husband and wife, they joined ZLG shortly after we opened. I appreciate our longstanding association and friendship.

• Stacia Lewandowski, our gallery scribe. A talented writer, she helps us stay in touch with everyone who wants to hear from, or about, ZLG. Her contribution continues with this catalogue, for which we’re thankful.

• The members of Zaplin Lampert Gallery’s staff. I can’t be complimentary enough about them, so I appreciate this opportunity to express my deep gratitude. Words like “exceptional,” “loyal,” and “indispensible” come to mind—as does “long-tenured.” They are gallery director Jeffrey Thurston (with us for twenty-six years), Ben Sandoval (fourteen years), David Clemmer (fourteen years), Deborah Byrnes (ten years), Eric Zuckerman (six years), Stephanie Morimoto (six years), Lynnsey Butler (four years), and Lynn Bentley (two years).

Together they form the cornerstone of the gallery, and I consider them family.

A special thank-you is due to Tim Peterson, a dear friend and a passionate collector who has so generously included Zaplin Lampert Gallery in his support for Scottsdale’s Museum of the West. Tim is a great partner to all involved.

Finally, I would like to recognize my wife, Annadru. She brings so much into my life, including her love and support.

Her invaluable assistance with this catalogue is but one instance of her constant dedication.

With my very best wishes,

Richard Lampert, 2017

“All art that is worthwhile is a record of intense life, and each individual artist’s work is a record of his special effort, search and feelings, in language especially chosen by himself and devised best to express him, and the significance of his work can only be understood by careful study; . . . appreciation is individual, differs with each individual and is an act of creation based on the picture.”

—Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

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A Bond of Friendship

T

hirty years have passed since Mark Zaplin and Richard Lampert opened the door of Zaplin Lampert Gallery for business on June 15, 1987. Over those decades, we’ve observed and celebrated various anniversaries. But this one seems different: It’s a milestone reached. Certainly, arriving at the thirty-year mark is a moment to celebrate. However, it also encourages a pause, suggests making time for reflection.

Being involved in the world of historical art and spending our days viewing, researching, puzzling over, marveling at, and documenting works of art, we recognize that we have spent a major portion of our lives in a privileged sphere. This anniversary offers an occasion for us to turn our gaze back on those many days, in appreciation of all the meaningful and joyful moments we have experienced.

While thinking about this milestone, Richard challenged himself to take the past thirty years out of the abstract and give them some dimension with a visual component. He decided to identify thirty favorite works of art that have come and gone through the gallery. It was a difficult process because, over the years, we have located, handled, and even discovered a great number of works of singular stature. Yet, as Richard noted, even if this had been our sixtieth anniversary, he still would have had to leave out many noteworthy candidates.

This catalogue features Richard’s choice “30 for 30.” All works are held in private collections and some are currently on loan to museums. Permission to use the images that illustrate this publication was graciously given by their owners. Though selecting the art may have been a difficult decision, when viewed together, these particular works create a marvelous perspective encapsulating the historical trajectory of art of the American West. Together, they also reflect the breadth of paintings, sculpture, and photography that are at the heart of Zaplin Lampert Gallery.

l The fundamental theme that binds together all of the activities during the gallery’s thirty years is a dedicated love of art. But what drives the story through those three colorful, sometimes frenetic, decades are the bonds: between the two partners, the late Mark Zaplin (1952-2014) and Richard Lampert; within the gallery they started and built together;

and with the client relationships that were nurtured and grew strong.

Underlying the partnership between Mark and Richard is an extraordinary story that explains, and perhaps embodies, the bond that underpins their successful business. This is more than the story of two friends who decided to go into business together; it’s even more than the fact that they were school chums who remained so for life. Born only twelve days apart to parents who were friends, each was the first person the other knew outside of their own families. Living only doors away from one another in Newton, Massachusetts, they played together, went to school together, grew up together. From those early days, an entrepreneurial spirit ignited a common flame. Together they sold popcorn and lemonade, knives, insurance, and even the Great Books of the Western World.

Then, in 1972, when they were both twenty, the two were given a life-defining opportunity. Mark and Richard were part of a small group of peers who discovered the remaining works from the estate of photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis.

There, before them, languishing in the warehouse of Lauriat’s bookstore in Boston, lay Curtis’s original works: copperplates, portfolios, photogravures, and volumes of images and writings. The remains of his estate had been boxed and largely forgotten since the early days of the Great Depression. The young men didn’t know exactly what all of this was, but they had the instincts to realize they were face-to-face with a rare and significant part of America’s cultural legacy. Determined to seize this opportunity, Mark, Richard, and the group quickly

raised the money to purchase the entire collection. Enthralled by the mysterious faraway landscapes and peoples portrayed in the photographs, they both dropped out of their respective university programs and began to immerse themselves in the life and work of Edward S. Curtis. Richard started at the Boston Public Library, where he learned, much to his surprise, that Curtis had died the day before he himself was born.

Within six months, the Curtis group opened a gallery on Harvard Square. However, Easterners didn’t share their enthusiasm for or interest in these photographs. To their dismay, the clientele was more attracted to images of John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and George Washington than it was to those of Geronimo, Chief Joseph, and Red Cloud. It may have been the right time, but it soon became obvious to Mark and Richard that they were in the wrong place. They devised a new plan, packing up all their Curtis materials and heading west.

Over the next four years, Mark and Richard pursued their work, both together and independently and in various venues, roving through the West like a latter-day Lewis and Clark.

For them, it was a time of thrilling exploration: Prior to these travels, neither had been beyond the Mississippi River. They crisscrossed the West, exhibiting at museums and historical societies, art and antique shows, seeing for themselves the very pueblos and reservations Curtis had visited and photographed. The most important show came in 1973, when they held an exhibition of Curtis photogravures at the NelsonAtkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Mark based Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952) The Oath copper photogravure printing plate

himself in Boulder, and, later, in San Francisco, while Richard relocated to an area near Seattle, the city where Curtis had maintained a studio for many years.

In Seattle, Curtis’s work was held in high esteem, and collectors didn’t need to be persuaded of its aesthetic appeal or its importance. And, fortunately, Richard was able to see an even greater range of Curtis’s photography. This included his iconic platinum prints and stunning goldtones, the pinnacle medium of his output, in which the images were developed onto glass plates. Living on the West Coast afforded Mark and Richard the privilege of becoming acquainted with two of Curtis’s daughters. They had participated in some of their father’s long overland journeys documenting myriad North American tribes. Willing to share stories and discuss their father’s techniques, they even remembered some of the extraordinary people he had photographed. For Mark and Richard, it was a priceless education.

The pair reunited in Santa Fe in 1977, towing a U-Haul filled with their worldly belongings. It contained the usual— household goods and clothes—but also the unusual: their precious cache of Curtis materials. Santa Fe, by now known as the center of Southwestern art, became Mark and Richard’s city of choice for a home base and possibly even for putting down some roots. By this time, Mark and Richard’s interest had expanded beyond Curtis’s photographs. Inspired by a curiosity to learn about the objects pictured in some of the images—such as beautifully crafted pottery, beadwork, and textiles—they soon began to represent Native American art

similar to that shown in the photographs.

In Santa Fe, the sphere of Mark and Richard’s knowledge and expertise widened considerably. Their interest in the historical West grew steadily. As they began to handle a broader selection of art, they gravitated toward works by those known today as explorer artists. It was these painters who gave Americans, mostly those settled east of the Mississippi River, an introductory view of western life and landscapes. Of the government-led expeditions, only one included artists who provided scientific illustrations to accompany their reports.

Those men, along with fur trappers, were the limited few who had become acquainted with the cultural and geographical landscapes. In the early 1830s, first George Catlin and then Karl Bodmer traveled up the Missouri River and painted scenes never before portrayed by European-American artists.

It wasn’t until these men ventured into the “wilds” of the Far West, with the sole purpose of rendering the sights on paper and canvas, that the rest of America finally had an opportunity to see colorful images previously described only in words.

In 1982, Mark, Richard, and their partners sold what remained of Curtis’s estate and the copperplates. However, the two childhood friends never lost their enthusiasm for his work. Curtis had become the bedrock of their interests, and his photographs remained a major area of specialization for them. From that point forward, their focus turned primarily to one-of-a-kind or rare works. This category would include Curtis’s goldtones as well as paintings by other important early artists of the Western genre—Alfred Jacob Miller, John

Mix Stanley, Thomas Moran, and Albert Bierstadt, among others. These painters furthered the work of Catlin and Bodmer by venturing into the West themselves. They captured scenes that intrigued—even influenced—the viewing public, which remained curious about that previously unfathomable landscape and its people. Each of these artists went to survey a different aspect of the West, each with a different intention, each with a unique hand. And because the American West was such an immense territory to explore and document, its inhabitants were undeniably fresh as subjects while its scenery was at once dramatic and sublime.

By the time Mark and Richard opened their gallery in 1987, they were presenting the same quality of American art that one might see in a New York or Chicago gallery, but with a committed focus on the West. As it evolved, the gallery added to its roster the brilliant work of those who came to the Southwest after the turn of the last century. In the early days of the 1900s, Santa Fe was at the center of artistic activity, with a museum encouraging the production of art and colonies rapidly forming both there and in Taos. The iconic American artist Georgia O’Keeffe also famously worked in New Mexico.

However, she is associated with neither art colony, but rather Ghost Ranch and her home, in Abiquiú. As a result of all of this activity, a whole new genre of American art was being created and nurtured—Southwestern art.

After opening Zaplin Lampert Gallery, Mark and Richard recognized the importance of this genre and its deep-rooted relationship to Santa Fe. Focusing on the period from 1900 Karl Bodmer (1809–1893) Pehriska-Ruhpa in the Costume of a Dog Dancer

to mid-century, these works highlight a broad spectrum of art, from representational to abstraction and non-objective modernist expression. The wide-ranging artists creating regional work during that era include members of the Taos Society of Artists and such American notables as Marsden Hartley, Robert Henri, John Sloan, and John Marin. With this diverse array of art that depicts so well the historical epochs of the American West, Mark and Richard found their niche.

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E. Martin Hennings (1886–1956) Sunlit Foothills

Often a business partnership strains, and sometimes even breaks, the bonds of friendship. And though there were plenty of challenges, Mark and Richard’s friendship did not falter.

Loyalty remained paramount. At the gallery each brought unique strengths to their venture, and each saw the world through different eyes. Yet ultimately, theirs was a single vision. Uniting their best qualities, the partnership yielded rewards far greater than either of them could have imagined.

Part of the mission for Zaplin Lampert Gallery has always been to serve its clientele to the best of its ability. This has meant making every effort to know about the works being handled, including the artists’ biographical stories, the techniques they practiced, and the materials they used. When questions arose requiring additional scholarship beyond the scope of the research staff, a noted specialist might be asked to provide valued scrutiny and expertise. Seeking this knowledge has been an important part of the work at Zaplin

Lampert Gallery, not only for the benefit of the client, but also for gallery staff. Working with historical materials has involved continuous learning and the sharing of information, all of which has been rewarding and gratifying. Richard is justly proud of the gallery’s reputation for the scholarship and connoisseurship it has long provided to its clients.

Over the years, certain gallery activities have stood out from the day-to-day. Foremost among them is the sense of discovery in finding works that were labeled as missing or in authenticating works previously unknown. Of course, the most satisfying had been the experience with the Curtis find; the number of recent exhibits, books, and documentaries devoted to this photographer attests to the significance of Mark and Richard’s contribution in helping to reinstate his legacy. But there have been other instances of discovery over the course of the past three decades. An outstanding example was when a couple walked into the gallery with an oil-on-canvas painting they had purchased at a small antique shop in southern New Mexico. They had wanted the picture for its frame, bargaining with the owner until they bought it for under $100. When Richard saw the painting, he immediately called Mark back from his lunch at a nearby restaurant. When Mark objected, Richard assured him that he would not regret the interruption.

He didn’t. The painting was by Ernest L. Blumenschein, and it sold quickly—an experience that was, for that couple, lifechanging (see plate 25).

The gallery’s reputation has also led to longstanding

Fremont F. Ellis (1897-1985) At the Gate

Photo by Bill Timmerman, courtesy of Studio Ma Architect

first decades of the twentieth century, including paintings, sculpture, photography, memorabilia, and significant examples of Native American textiles, pottery, beadwork, and quillwork. Zaplin Lampert Gallery was pleased to be able to provide complete curatorial services for this exhibit. Richard remarked, “having a gallery in a museum named after you is a major honor. I know Mark is smiling now.”

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relationships with clients, collectors, galleries, museums, and foundations in the service of connoisseurship and building collections. Working with curators and museum directors has resulted in many rewarding associations, in particular those with the Museum of New Mexico, Phoenix Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Museum of Nebraska Art, Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, Massachusetts), and, most significantly, Scottsdale’s Museum of the West.

In recognition of Mark and Richard’s support and dedication, a gallery in the Peterson Family Wing of Scottsdale’s Museum of the West was named the Zaplin Lampert Gallery.

Its 2015 inaugural exhibition, Courage & Crossroads, is still on display. This exhibit features a comprehensive collection of art of the early American West, from the 1820s through the

The artwork presented in this book, thirty highlights in celebration of the gallery’s thirty years, is a distinguished compilation showcasing the scope of the art Zaplin Lampert Gallery has been privileged to handle.

The explorer artists are represented by George Catlin, Alfred Jacob Miller, and John Mix Stanley. An intrepid painter who made several forays into the West, Stanley worked both independently and on government-sponsored explorations.

He had developed a large body of work reflecting the contemporary life of Native Americans, trappers, and inhabitants of western forts. But in 1865, nearly two hundred of his paintings held at the Smithsonian Institution went up in flames. Because of this loss, Stanley’s remaining works are rare treasures today. Another featured artist is British-born Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait. Though he never ventured to the West, Tait devoted an important part of his career to portraying early western subjects. In Trappers Following the Trail: At Fault, he depicted an inherently dramatic moment on the wild prairie.

In 1869, the completion of the railroad system connecting the American continent from coast to coast ushered in a new era, forever changing the West. Artists were well aware of what was at stake for the people whose lives were directly connected to the land, for the vast herds of buffalo, and for the pristine streams, mountains, and open plains. Albert Bierstadt, who made his first trip to the West in 1859, became famous for his landscapes but also for his fateful depictions of buffalo and Native American scenes. Thomas Moran focused on breathtaking mountain and canyon landscapes, while his brother Peter Moran is noted for some of the earliest and most accurate portrayals of nineteenth-century life in the Southwest.

Three of the most recognized and popular artists who began to perpetuate the mythos of the West into the twentieth century are Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, and W. R. Leigh. For this compilation, Richard selected works that exemplify the artists at their best: a Remington bronze of a mountain man on horseback, a Russell oil painting of a buffalo hunt, and one of Leigh’s inimitable cowboy scenes.

The Southwest inspired a large and diverse number of artists. Some worked during temporary visits, while others settled in northern New Mexico and devoted much of their careers to its unique themes. This collection of favorites presents a dazzling mix of styles from the masters of the Taos Society of Artists and the Santa Fe Art Colony, along with iconoclastic artists such as Nicolai Fechin, Leon Gaspard, Robert Henri, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jan Matulka. The Grand Canyon has challenged artists ever since Thomas Moran first

displayed the depths of its confounding landscape to the world.

Gunnar Widforss and Louis Akin, both selected for this choice list, are two artists who rose to that challenge. Widforss was hailed during his career as the painter of America’s national parks. In contrast, Andrew Wyeth, a major name in twentiethcentury American art, is known for his detailed and sensitive depictions of rural life in the East; the inclusion of a Wyeth painting in this collection underscores the wide latitude of the gallery’s focus over the years. And, finally, representing Edward S. Curtis, whose remarkable body of work propelled Mark and Richard into the gallery business, is one of the photographer’s most rare portraits: the large-scale goldtone Medicine Crow.

For Zaplin Lampert Gallery, it has been a journey spanning three decades. For Mark and Richard, the friendship, adventures, and partnership lasted more than sixty years. At its foundation was the bond that held and remains strong even today. If the gallery were to continue for another thirty years, Richard is confident that he would have just as many favorites to showcase in celebration of that anniversary, and that winnowing them down to sixty would be every bit as difficult.

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George Catlin 1796–1872

“The several tribes of Indians inhabiting the regions of the Upper Missouri . . . are undoubtedly the finest looking, best equipped, and most beautifully costumed of any on the Continent.” —George Catlin, Letter No. 4 When the United States expanded its boundaries beyond the Mississippi River after the 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory, a vast tract of land was opened for exploration. It had been primarily the province of Native American tribes and men of the fur trade; decades would pass before much visual record of the landscape or its inhabitants was created. George Catlin took it upon himself to venture to that far western realm and tell the world about what and who he had encountered. As a result, he led a life of grand adventure.

“I started out in the year 1832, and penetrated the vast

and pathless wilds which are familiarly denominated the great ‘Far West’ of the North American Continent . . . I have visited forty-eight different tribes, the greater part of which I found speaking different languages, and containing in all 400,000 souls. I have brought home safe, and in good order, 310 portraits in oil, all painted in their native dress, and in their own wigwams; and also 200 other paintings in oil.”

Catlin spent prodigious energy and most of his career painting the native tribes in the American West, taking his Indian Gallery to numerous cities in the United States and Europe. His two-volume book, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians, is a storehouse of American cultural history.

1 Blackfoot Indian Group c. 1840 oil on artist’s board 16 x 225/8 inches

Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait 1819–1905

British-born artist Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait was influenced by George Catlin’s Indian Gallery when it toured Great Britain during the 1840s. In fact, once Tait settled in the United States, he told stories of having participated as a performer in Catlin’s Indian Gallery exhibits: The artist hired actors to showcase the Native American clothing and implements he had acquired during his travels in the American Far West.

Primarily a self-taught artist, Tait began drawing and copying scenes at a very young age, and began his career as a lithographer. Immigrating to the United States around 1850, he settled in New York City. There, he turned his focus toward painting and became friendly with some of the preeminent artists working in the city at that time. One notable acquaintance was William Ranney, a painter with whom he shared similar

artistic themes. Tait soon gained attention for his work, and, by 1852, he was exhibiting at the National Academy of Design, becoming a full Academician in 1858.

Throughout his career, Tait showed a talent for portraying animals. He is most closely associated with Adirondack hunting scenes, but during the first decade of his work in the United States, Tait created a number of western paintings despite never traveling west of Chicago. Reportedly, Ranney loaned him a variety of authentic western props from his own collection.

A highly respected artist, Tait’s depictions of the frontier and the Far West number only twenty-two. Trappers Following the Trail: At Fault is widely considered one of his best.

2 Trappers Following the Trail: At Fault aka Tracking 1851 oil on canvas 361/4 x 50 inches

Alfred Jacob Miller 1810–1874

“The Sioux, or Dacotahs, and the Snake Indians were the finest Indians decidedly that we met with.” —Alfred Jacob Miller In the spring of 1837, Baltimore artist Alfred Jacob Miller set out on a western journey with British nobleman Sir William Drummond Stewart. Sir William had developed a love for the wilds of the American Far West while making the overland trek from New Orleans to the Rocky Mountains on several occasions. In 1837, his entourage attended the annual fur trappers’ rendezvous along the Green River near Horse Creek.

Afterward, the nobleman’s party went hunting in the pristine Wind River Mountains in what is today’s western Wyoming.

Miller is the only artist ever to witness and depict the rendezvous, a mountain extravaganza peopled with myriad characters in the fur-trapping trade and hundreds of members

of various Native American tribes. After his return, Miller resumed work in his studio, producing stunning paintings in both watercolor and oil from the many sketches he had made on-site. Exhibits of these canvases, filled with unusual subjects, were held in New York City and Baltimore. Sir William Drummond Stewart, wanting to surround himself with visions of his adventures in the Far West, later commissioned Miller for additional paintings, which the artist completed on the nobleman’s estate, Murthly Castle, in Scotland.

Following his return to the United States, Miller once again set up his studio in Baltimore. For the remainder of his career, he continued to paint unique western scenes as the exclusive artist of this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

3 Sioux Camp c. 1852 oil on canvas 171/2 x 24 inches

Albert Bierstadt 1830–1902

German-born artist Albert Bierstadt developed a strong affinity for the American West. The grand vistas he witnessed there matched his outsize vision and ambition. On July 10, 1859, during the first of his many painting excursions to the West, he wrote to the art magazine, The Crayon: “I am delighted with the scenery. The mountains are very fine; as seen from the plains they resemble very much the Bernese Alps . . . the figures of the Indians so enticing, . . .

The manners and customs of the Indians are still as they were hundreds of years ago, and now is the time to paint them, for they are rapidly passing away . . . I think that the artist

ought to tell his portion of their history as well as the writer; a combination of both will render it more complete.”

Following his return to his studio in New York, Bierstadt created impressive, highly romanticized representations of the West. With much publicity and fanfare, Bierstadt unveiled his sixty-square-foot painting, The Rocky Mountains, and his fame spread quickly. By the 1870s, he was America’s most celebrated artist, with paintings in important American and European museum collections and commissions for two paintings in the U.S. Capitol.

4 The Artist Painting in Wind River c. 1860s oil on board 10 x 14 inches

John Mix Stanley 1814–1872

John Mix Stanley made his first painting excursion in the Far West in 1842. Allowed to set up a studio at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma Territory, he was active at this important settlement, the meeting place for the U.S. military, as well as for various tribes and frontiersmen. Stanley was fortunate that during this trip he was able to move his studio to the nearby capital of the Cherokee Nation, Tahlequah. There, he witnessed a four-week Indian Council in the spring of 1843, then remained working on-site for several more months.

From that point onward, Stanley had an adventurous career. He traveled the Santa Fe Trail and met General Kearney in Santa Fe, joining his military operation to cover the general’s battles in San Diego, California, during the U.S.– Mexican War. He traveled up the coast to Fort Walla Walla,

Washington, and the next year he went down to the Hawaiian Islands, sketching and painting all the while.

Having created a considerable body of work by 1850, Stanley began to make a name for himself with exhibits of his Indian Gallery. In 1852, he took the exhibit to the Smithsonian and left the works there while he continued with his work. Around this time, the American government began supporting survey expeditions to identify an adequate route for a trans-continental rail line. Stanley accompanied the northernmost survey that went from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Fort Vancouver, Washington. During this trip, Stanley visited various Northwestern tribes, meeting with different chiefs and stopping at hunters’ camps, forts, and missions.

5 Hunters and Traders 1862 oil on canvas 251/4 x 301/4 inches

Thomas Moran 1837–1926

“While I desired to tell truly of Nature, I did not wish to realize the scene literally, but to preserve and to convey its true impression.” —Thomas Moran In 1871, Thomas Moran accompanied a U.S. Geological Survey expedition, led by Ferdinand V. Hayden, to explore the region of the Rocky Mountains known as Yellowstone country.

Home to Native Americans and exploited by fur trappers, it was largely a mysterious area, storied for its geological wonders of spewing geysers and boiling mud pots. During that trip, Moran documented more than thirty sites. After his return to New York in 1872, he completed The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, a huge canvas that was purchased by the U.S. Congress. Moran’s paintings of the Yellowstone region, along with photographs by William Henry Jackson, who had served as expedition photographer, helped persuade Congress to designate it as the nation’s first national park in 1872.

After his initial treks in the rugged Yellowstone region, Moran made several additional journeys through difficult western terrain, including ones to the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Rockies. Although Moran made numerous and detailed sketches during his travels, his finished compositions, created in his studio, were the result of his attempt to express the experience of what he saw in raw nature, rather than a detailed documentation of any particular scene.

This painting is one of the fifteen original watercolors that had been in the possession of Louis Prang, the Bostonbased chromolithographer. In 1876, Prang skillfully rendered Moran’s paintings as chromolithographs, compiling and releasing them, along with Hayden’s text, as limited-edition portfolios titled The Yellowstone National Park, and the Mountain Regions of Portions of Idaho, Nevada, Colorado and Utah.

6 Tower Falls and Sulfur Rock — Yellowstone c. 1871–1875 watercolor 141/2 x 101/2 inches

Peter Moran 1841–1914

Peter Moran was one of four brothers, all of whom became artists, each with a different focus. The Moran family moved from Great Britain to the United States in 1844 and settled in Philadelphia. From a young age, Moran developed his skills as an etcher, working in the commercial trade before turning to painting. His specialty became animal subjects and genre scenes.

In 1879, Moran accompanied his brother Thomas on an extensive trip through the American West. Further travels over the next two summers with another artist, Henry Rankin Poore, took Moran to the Southwest, where the pair visited Taos, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, as well as several pueblos situated along the Rio Grande and Hopi lands in Arizona.

During their second trip to the Southwest, Moran and Poore accompanied an expedition led by Lieutenant John Gregory Bourke, who already had considerable experience in the region, having served in Southwestern regiments for more than a decade.

During these excursions, Moran sketched a great variety of scenes in pencil and watercolor. After returning to his studio in Philadelphia, he used those sketches as the basis for polished works—etchings (sixteen scenes in total) and paintings in oil and watercolor. With such an extensive, masterfully executed collection, Peter Moran created one of the first significant bodies of work set in New Mexico.

7 Outskirts of Old Santa Fe, New Mexico 1881 oil on canvas 20 x 30 inches

Louis Akin 1868–1913

“It is simply too good to leave. It’s the best stuff in America and has scarcely been touched.” —Louis Akin, on his first impressions of the Southwest In 1892, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway initiated a plan that would spawn one of the great collections of western art: It would promote travel to the Southwest with masterful paintings of the region. At first, the railway paid for the limited use of paintings. Later, in 1901, William Simpson, the man behind the railway’s promotions, began the practice of offering artists expense-paid travel to the Southwest in exchange for paintings of regional subjects. A collection grew quickly; by 1907, it already numbered more than one hundred works of art.

New York artist Louis Akin was ready for a change of scene when he was approached by the Santa Fe Railway in 1903.

The railway offered transportation to Arizona in exchange for paintings of the Hopi Indians. Akin accepted, immersing himself in Hopi culture by living at Oraibi Pueblo, where he dressed as a Hopi and learned their customs and language.

After returning to New York, Akin received another invitation from the Santa Fe Railway, this time to paint a Grand Canyon subject. A hotel had opened on the south rim, and the railway wanted a captivating painting to advertise both the hotel and its setting near the rim, with a vista like no other.

In response, Akin produced El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon in 1907. Later, he dedicated his career to working in Arizona.

This painting was purchased by Zaplin Lampert Gallery from the Santa Fe Railway when parts of the collection were being dispersed in 1998. It remains one of the most iconic images of the Grand Canyon.

8 El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon 1907 oil on canvas 25 x 50 inches

Edward S. Curtis 1868–1952

“The passing of every old man or woman means the passing of some tradition, some knowledge of sacred rites possessed by no other; consequently the information that is to be gathered, for the benefit of future generations, respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost for all time.” —Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian, Volume 1 Between 1900 and 1930, Edward S. Curtis took on a gargantuan task: the creation of a photographic and ethnographic record of Native American tribes living west of the Mississippi River. His ambitious plan led to his landmark publication of The North American Indian, a twenty-volume set of large-scale leather-bound portfolios that included photogravures and text. During his career, Curtis produced more than forty thousand negatives depicting people from

tribes as far apart as the Arctic Circle and the American Southwest.

Over the course of four decades of studying and handling Curtis photographs, Mark Zaplin and Richard Lampert have viewed an enormous range of his prints in multiple mediums: photogravure, albumen, silver bromide, platinum, and orotone, also known as goldtone. Medicine Crow is deemed to be among the finest of Curtis’s goldtone photographs. Following their initial discovery of Curtis materials in 1972, Mark and Richard had seen only one other example of Medicine Crow in this medium, and its condition had been compromised. When this goldtone became available, they knew it was extremely important. Moreover, because of its superlative condition, Medicine Crow is indisputably a rare gem.

9 Medicine Crow 1906 goldtone photograph 14 x 11 inches

Julius Rolshoven 1858–1930

“Mr. and Mrs. Rolshoven confess that they have never been more genuinely thrilled, more enthusiastically fascinated with the themes for painters’ brush, both landscape and life, than in the Southwest.” —El Palacio, July 1917 Having escaped the torment of World War I in Italy, Julius Rolshoven and his wife were on an extended tour of the United States when they arrived in Santa Fe in 1916. Originally from Detroit, Rolshoven had made a name for himself as an accomplished portrait painter in Europe and had purchased an old villa, Il Castello del Diavolo, in Florence. The couple’s arrival in Santa Fe aroused curiosity and excitement. Rolshoven was granted free studio space by the Museum of New Mexico, as was the custom when notable artists appeared. However, Rolshoven often took his canvases outdoors to paint.

Whether or not it was a coincidence, it was certainly fortunate that Rolshoven was already acquainted with two artists of the Taos Society of Artists, Joseph Henry Sharp and Eanger Irving Couse: They had met in Paris some years before. The Taos Society, always searching for ways to improve its annual circuit exhibitions, invited Rolshoven to join as an associate member. This is notable, since the society had to change its by-laws to make this possible (Rolshoven had not fulfilled the stated residency requirements). The next year, the organization elected him to full membership.

Rolshoven created an impressive body of work during his short two-year New Mexico residency. The Council was recently discovered at the same time as the artist’s larger version was on display at Santa Fe’s New Mexico Museum of Art.

10 The Council c. 1916 oil on paper, mounted on board 32 x 411/2 inches

Frederic Remington 1861–1909

“I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever, and the more I considered the subject the bigger the Forever loomed.” —Frederic Remington, A Few Words from Mr. Remington, in Collected Writings Remington had gained popular fame during his lifetime for his vivid drawings and paintings, often depicting moments of human drama and interaction in the American West.

Equally stirring were his frequently published writings about aspects of life in the West. Traveling regularly from his studio in New York, Remington gathered western material that he used as subjects in his portrayals. Having spent time with the U.S. military and at the camps of both cowboys and Mexican vaqueros, he had credibility as an eyewitness. In all, his work

as an illustrator appeared in almost a hundred and fifty books and some forty periodicals.

In mid-career, Remington began to exhibit his paintings, and in 1891 he was elected as an associate member of the National Academy of Design. But it was not until 1895, when he started working as a sculptor and released Bronco Buster, that fine-art critics began to take a serious look at his artwork.

The first of his works to be acquired by a museum was a bronze sculpture, Comin’ Through the Rye, which was cast in 1902.

With his sculpture garnering widespread acclaim, Remington produced a total of twenty-two bronze sculptures before his death at the age of forty-eight.

11 The Mountain Man Bronze 29 x 21 x 111/2 inches

Warren E. Rollins 1861–1962

Warren Eliphalet Rollins was an active artist in the Southwest long before he moved to Santa Fe. During the summer of 1910, while on his way to Taos for a summer of painting, he stopped for a visit in Santa Fe. At that time, he managed to arrange an exhibit of his paintings at the Palace of the Governors. His exhibit ushered in a new era for artwork in Santa Fe. Soon, art exhibitions were held with frequency at the old Palace until the art museum opened seven years later. After moving to Santa Fe around 1918, Rollins became known as the dean of Santa Fe painters. He was one of the artists allowed the free use of a museum art studio, and his activities were often mentioned in the museum’s journal, El Palacio. In November 1918, the journal reported that “Rollins has been assigned a studio at

the West end of the Palace of the Governors where he will work on his big painting ‘The Altar of the Gods’ for which he has gathered sketches and material at Zuni.”

El Palacio also noted the painting’s premiere in 1919 at Santa Fe’s New Mexico Museum of Art. Inspiration for this work, Rollins revealed, came from his experience witnessing a ceremony at Zuni.

Rollins had an interesting career that kept him moving freely between Santa Fe and Taos—and often farther afield, spending long periods of time with the Zuni and Hopi. Later in life, he had a studio at Chaco Canyon, in northwestern New Mexico, where his daughter and her husband ran the trading post.

12 The Altar of the Gods 1919 oil on canvas 102 x 70 inches

William Penhallow Henderson 1877–1943

William Penhallow Henderson reveled in the beauty of northern New Mexico, while his curiosity was piqued by the colorful, long held traditions of the region’s Native and Spanish peoples. After settling in Santa Fe in 1916, the Boston-raised artist quickly adopted the norms of his new surroundings, donning a cowboy hat and traveling around on horseback.

Henderson had moved his family to Santa Fe because of his wife’s respiratory illness, and the timing was auspicious for the artist. The city’s new art museum was under construction, and artists working in the region were promised space in the inaugural exhibition that was to be held in November 1917. Henderson must have gotten to

work immediately: With fifteen paintings in the museum’s inaugural exhibit of Southwestern art, he was among the artists with the most paintings in the show.

Such a prodigious display attests to how quickly Henderson was able to capture the spirit of his new subjects. One painting from the museum’s opening exhibit, End of Santa Fe Trail, depicts a lively scene on the Santa Fe Plaza. From the artist’s viewpoint—looking toward St. Francis Cathedral and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains—the painting vividly encapsulates the cultural, architectural, and physical landscapes that are true to life in Santa Fe.

13 End of Santa Fe Trail 1917 oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Robert Henri 1865–1929

“The people I like to paint are ‘my people,’ whoever they may be, wherever they may exist, the people through whom dignity of life is manifest, that is, who are in some way expressing themselves naturally along the lines nature intended for them . . . Wherever I find them . . . my interest is awakened and my impulse immediately is to tell about them through my own language—drawing and painting in color.” —Robert Henri, The Art Spirit In 1916, Robert Henri, a highly influential American artist, accepted an invitation to visit Santa Fe from Edgar L. Hewett, director of the Museum of New Mexico. Offering Henri the use of free studio space, Hewett had also assured him that the Santa Fe region and its people would provide plenty of

stimulating subjects to suit the painter’s imagination. Indeed, Henri was extremely pleased during his three-month visit. In addition to executing more than one hundred paintings, he assisted Hewett with the plans for Santa Fe’s new art museum, scheduled to open the following year. Henri returned in 1917, exhibited in the museum’s inaugural exhibition, and returned again to paint in 1922. These visits solidified Henri’s relationship with Santa Fe, inspiring him to write to Hewett that he would always consider himself “primarily of the Santa Fe family of artists.”

Macedonia, painted during Henri’s 1917 visit to Santa Fe, was among the paintings he chose for his national exhibition circuit of 1918–19.

14 Macedonia 1917 oil on canvas 32 x 26 inches

Jan Matulka 1890–1972

“As a painter, he was the real thing. There is nothing false or unfelt in his work, nothing faked, nothing ill understood. He knew what he was doing, and he did it well.”

—The New York Times When Jan Matulka and his parents left Bohemia in 1907 to make a new life for themselves in the United States, they settled in New York City. Having already studied art in Prague for two years, Matulka enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York. Over the next nine years, he proved to be an outstanding student. In 1917, he was awarded the Joseph Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship and chose to go to the American Southwest.

At the time, the Southwest was beginning to attract artists in ever-increasing numbers. Art colonies were growing in both Santa Fe and Taos, and Robert Henri, an influential painter and teacher, was encouraging artists through his favorable reporting about the region’s unique atmosphere. When

Matulka arrived, he visited various Native American pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico. After returning to New York, he completed two large, outstanding paintings unlike anything that had been created by New Mexico’s artists.

Cubism, introduced by Picasso and Braque just ten years earlier, was a radical development in modern art. Picasso’s groundbreaking 1907 work, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which featured a combination of figures, African masks, and broken planes, was not exhibited publicly until 1916. Matulka’s Indian Dancers with Masks, remarkable for its modern composition, also brings together a vibrant combination of figures—some wearing masks—and jaunty angles, creating lively contrasts of shape, color, and design.

The second Matulka dance painting resulting from his 1917 trip to the Southwest is in the Anschutz Collection at the American Museum of Western Art in Denver.

15 Indian Dancers with Masks 1917 oil on canvas 38 x 30 inches

Charles M. Russell 1864–1926

As a teenager, Charles Marion Russell left his home in St. Louis and went to Montana Territory. He arrived just as the last remaining herds of buffalo were still evident on the plains.

A few years later, they were gone. But he enjoyed imagining them, as reported from an earlier era: “Some of the hunters, who had been six or eight years about the head of the Missouri, said they had seen them [buffalo] during their annual migrations from north to south, in Autumn, and to the northward in Spring . . .

At these times they assemble in vast herds, marching in regular order. Some asserted that they had been able to distinguish where the herds were beyond the bounds of the visible horizon, by the vapour which arose from their bodies. Others stated that they had seen herds extending

many miles in length.” —John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811 Eager to experience real western life, Russell got a job and an education doing what men in Montana did at the time: working as a cowboy driving cattle, trying his hand as a horse wrangler, and living at various times with a trapper and on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. These experiences provided ready subjects, and he was rarely separated from his sketchpad and paints. A self-taught artist, his talent and perseverance served his far-reaching aspirations. Russell was passionate about the Old West and its way of life, which had passed quickly before his eyes. The buffalo, emblematic of the old days, remained an essential part of Russell’s work throughout his career—so much so that he used the buffalo skull as his insignia.

16 Fighting Meat aka Horse and the Hunter 1919 oil on canvas 15 x 24 inches

Joseph Henry Sharp 1859–1953

“He was the reporter, the recorder of absolute integrity of the American Indian . . . He will go down in history with Russel [sic] and Remington and the few early artists of Indian life.”

—E.L. Blumenschein, at the memorial service for Joseph Henry Sharp From a young age, Joseph Henry Sharp was drawn to create images of Native American life. He made a series of early painting excursions to the West, but his work came to significant prominence in 1900 with his exhibition of portraits resulting from a prolonged visit painting members of tribes living near the Little Big Horn battlefield in Montana.

The exhibit went on view in Washington, D.C., and Paris.

Afterward, the Smithsonian Institution purchased eleven of the portraits. Then there was another sale, in which Phoebe Hearst bought eighty paintings, which she later bequeathed to the University of California.

Dividing his time between Montana and Taos, Sharp purchased the Luna Chapel in Taos for his studio in 1909, returning to the place he had earlier recommended to Blumenschein and Phillips. After Sharp joined the small group of artists working in Taos, they eventually organized the Taos Society of Artists. When Sharp and his wife moved permanently to Taos in 1912, they brought with them an enormous collection of Native American artifacts, which he occasionally depicted in his paintings. Always a diligent worker, Sharp sometimes completed hundreds of paintings in a single year. One of his most devoted later patrons was Thomas Gilcrease, of Oklahoma, who acquired some two hundred of Sharp’s works as well as a variety of the artifacts from his studio.

Crucita and Leaf Down is a painting depicting two of Sharp’s favorite models from Taos Pueblo.

17 Crucita and Leaf Down c. 1920 oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches

Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt 1878–1955

In 1912, the Chicago Record-Herald described B.J.O. Nordfeldt as “eager, tense, critical, absorbed in the perfecting of his own genius, contemptuous of triflers, critical of contemporaries.”

Although he was only thirty-four at the time that comment was written, the description sounds apt for the artist who later worked among the Santa Fe and Taos artists for some twenty years.

Born in Sweden, Nordfeldt moved to Chicago at a young age and attended the School of the Art Institute. He established himself in Chicago as a professional artist and won acclaim as a printmaker. Eager for more exposure to avant-garde ideas in art, Nordfeldt announced in 1913 that he was going to Paris to work with artists who “believe in progress.” While in

Paris, Nordfeldt became deeply influenced by the work of Paul Cézanne. When he returned to the United States and moved to Santa Fe in 1918, he resolved to commit himself to becoming a painter.

Nordfeldt was respected by other artists in the region; the Taos Society of Artists elected him as an associate member. In 1923, he also joined with the New Mexico Painters, in allegiance with those who aspired to explore progressive ideas in art. Even so, Nordfeldt remained a somewhat singular figure during his Santa Fe period, critical and challenging of others, as well as of himself. It was reported that he destroyed a number of his works before leaving Santa Fe in 1937. Fortunately, among those that remain are masterpieces of Southwestern art.

18 Corn Dance — Santo Domingo c. 1920 oil on canvas 29 x 34 inches

Leon Gaspard 1882–1964

“Every Sunday morning in Taos that winter, we sat at the kitchen table of a painter of a world virtually unknown in art . . . [a] beautiful world that no longer exists, but which has been caught and held out of the remorseless stream of time by the strikingly colorful palette of Leon Gaspard.” —Frank Waters, author and Gaspard friend and biographer Russian painter Leon Gaspard hailed from Vitebsk, Belarus. He started drawing at a young age, and his talent was encouraged through art classes in Vitebsk and, later, at the Académie Julian in Paris. His love of travel and adventure developed early, too. His father was a fur and rug trader who sometimes took young Leon with him on journeys to Siberia and Mongolia. The appearance and traditions of the many cultures he encountered on these trips remained a lifelong fascination.

During World War I, Gaspard enlisted in the French

aviation corps as an observer and recorder. After a serious injury and months of recuperation, he left Europe for the United States. He and his wife tried living and working in various locales, including Taos and Santa Fe, but the place he liked best was Taos. The Gaspards returned there in 1918 and remained permanently. It was the rustic look of the town, the nearby pueblo at the edge of forested mountains, and the sagebrush plains of the Rio Grande Valley that appealed to him. He once remarked that those plains reminded him of the Gobi Desert.

Throughout his career, Gaspard continued to travel and paint the people and scenes he encountered on journeys that included China, Mongolia, and Russia. Those settings, and the ones around his adopted home of New Mexico, encouraged a bright color palette—which he employed to exuberant effect.

19 Samarkand Girl 1926 oil on canvas, mounted on board 163/16 x 111/2 inches

Kenneth M. Adams 1897–1966

“The later ones, like myself, sought their counsel and advice, always freely and graciously given. Men of good humor— patient, kind, and tolerant—they worked over the rough corners of our ‘greenness’ until we were acceptable ‘Taoseños.’”

—Kenneth Adams, on members of the Taos Society of Artists, New Mexico Quarterly, Summer 1951 Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, Kenneth Adams studied at Chicago’s Art Institute and, later, at the Art Students League in New York. By chance, he viewed a painting in a New York gallery by an artist who would become one of his greatest influences—Andrew Dasburg. Adams signed up for Dasburg’s summer classes in Woodstock, New York, marking the beginning of their long association.

A young artist inspired by modernist ideas, Adams arrived in Taos in 1924, ready to explore the environment that had recently excited so many others. Dasburg wrote a letter of introduction for him to present to Walter Ufer, who then helped him find a studio and housing. In 1926, the Taos Society of

Artists elected Adams to their membership. However, it was a short-lived affiliation; the Taos Society of Artists disbanded the next year.

Adams went on to have an impactful career in New Mexico.

He began teaching—first, at the Taos Harwood Field School of Art; later, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

During the Depression, Adams created a variety of work locally through the WPA, including murals for post offices, as well as lithographs and individual paintings. With his national recognition growing, in 1938 Adams was elected an associate at the National Academy of Design. Through a grant from the Carnegie Foundation, he became artist-in-residence at the University of New Mexico, executing in 1939 four large-scale murals, The Peoples of New Mexico, for the library.

Taos Plaza, a painting from his early days in Taos, remains one of the finest depictions of the picturesque, storied landmark.

20 Taos Plaza c. 1926 oil on canvas 24 x 32 inches

Nicolai Fechin 1881–1955

“In the Indian mountains my father flourished. He loved the place. He had found an American ‘home.’ He said the Taos mountains reminded him of the beauty he had seen in Siberia.

He painted with fervor.” —Eya Fechin Branham Raised in the city of Kazan, Russia, Nicolai Fechin studied at the Kazan Art School and later at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in the class of noted Russian painter Ilya Repin. In Fechin’s final year at the academy, one of his paintings won the Prix de Rome, allowing him to travel. He chose to visit the art capitals of Europe. Returning to Kazan as an art instructor, he soon was receiving invitations to participate in international exhibitions. His first exhibit in the United States was in 1910, at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. The portrait he entered garnered rave reviews. A Pittsburgh collector who purchased the painting later became an important patron, eventually helping Fechin and his family flee from Russia and settle in New York. Three years later, after

Fechin contracted tuberculosis, his family sought a healthier climate for his condition.

In 1926, Fechin, his wife, Alexandra, and his daughter, Eya, moved to Taos and purchased a home. Fechin masterfully carved the woodwork throughout the house—a craft he had learned from his father. His health returned, ushering in a period of intense work and creativity, along with numerous commissions. He found the landscape and local people inspiring, particularly the residents of Taos Pueblo. He also enjoyed the friendship of another Russian painter, Leon Gaspard, who had settled in Taos eight years earlier, and shared his love of fishing, chess, and vodka. But by 1934, Fechin was divorced, and his Taos chapter came to a close.

Fechin painted Portrait of Eya during his splendid Taos period. Eya later returned to Taos, and Richard Lampert had the privilege of knowing and working with her.

21 Portrait of Eya 1928 oil on canvas 211/2 x 211/2 inches

Jozef Bakos 1891–1977

Jozef Bakos will forever be linked with Los Cinco Pintores, the group of five Santa Fe painters that formed in 1921. After announcing their launch, the young men garnered immediate attention and a well-received exhibit at Santa Fe’s art museum.

Prior to that, they’d had a tough time getting noticed, as Santa Fe and Taos had already become populated with recognized artists. In 1923, Bakos also helped found the New Mexico Painters, bringing together artists from both colonies. Along with its established artists such as Ernest Blumenschein, William Penhallow Henderson, and Andrew Dasburg, members of this group considered themselves artistically adventurous and eager to explore modernist trends.

Andrew Dasburg, one of the foremost modernists among the regional painters, had studied in Paris and was influenced by the work of Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse.

For younger artists interested in Modernism, Dasburg was a

highly respected and influential advocate. According to Bakos biographer Stanley Cuba, one painting, Pine Tree and Road, Santa Fe Canyon, has an unusual history. Bakos explained that Dasburg had visited him in his studio while he was putting the finishing touches on the painting. Evidently, Dasburg considered it still unfinished and added additional brushwork, creating further modulation. Bakos reported: “It happened that I had half a pint of whiskey. I don’t know how it happened, because it was during Prohibition. We sipped a little at a time and we got more courageous every minute—on my painting!”

Zaplin Lampert Gallery loaned Pine Tree and Road, Santa Fe Canyon to Santa Fe’s New Mexico Museum of Art for its 1988 Bakos retrospective. After viewing it in the museum exhibit, its current owners strolled into the gallery one day and asked if it was for sale. It was.

22 Pine Tree and Road, Santa Fe Canyon c. 1928 oil on canvas 30 x 24 inches

Joseph Fleck 1892–1977

“Joseph A. Fleck created a body of work that testifies to his distinctive place in the Taos art colony and American art in general.” —Michael R. Grauer, Joseph Fleck, A Different Kind of Taos Artist Joseph Fleck emigrated from Austria to the United States in 1922, three years after he completed his studies at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He went to Kansas City, Missouri, where an acquaintance from Vienna had previously settled, and soon found work as a designer at an art-glass company. It didn’t take him long to become known as a fine artist, and his first exhibition was held in the United States in early 1923.

It was the art dealer Conrad Hug, of Hug Galleries in Kansas City, who first suggested Taos to the young artist. Hug regularly exhibited paintings by the Taos Society of Artists, and he introduced Fleck to their works. Fleck first went to Taos in 1924, a visit that lasted five months. That summer, he became friendly with many artists there and completed twenty-six paintings. Ernest Blumenschein suggested that he

try to exhibit in as many juried shows as possible in order to increase his stature. During the 1920s and ’30s, Fleck’s standing indeed rose. His works were exhibited frequently at the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Carnegie Institute of International Exhibitions, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Fleck became a United States citizen in 1927 and moved with his wife to Taos the same year. The house they built was completed in 1929, allowing him to become even more deeply rooted in the Taos community. His painting Fiesta Array was created in that pivotal year, and was soon after displayed at the Kansas City Art Institute in the solo exhibit The Art of Joseph A. Fleck, Original Oil Paintings.

In 1985, Fiesta Array was selected as the cover illustration for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Joseph A. Fleck: An Early Taos Painter, which was held at the New Mexico Museum of Art.

23 Fiesta Array 1929 oil on canvas 50 x 461/4 inches

Gunnar Widforss 1879–1934

“When you look at one of his paintings you always know what kind of a day it was, just what the weather was like. You hear the aspen leaves and smell the pine needles—it feels like you’re right there.” —Fred Kabotie, Hopi artist Swedish-born artist Gunnar Widforss achieved considerable success at an early age with his work in Europe. In 1921, he decided to take a painting excursion to the Far East. Along the way, his travels took him to California. Inspired by the landscape there, Widforss changed his mind. Instead of going to Japan, he began to paint in California. One of the places that led to his decision was Yosemite, which had become a national park in 1890. While at Yosemite, Widforss had the good fortune to meet Stephen T. Mather, the first director of the National Park Service. After Mather saw his work, he suggested to Widforss that he might enjoy making a specialty

of the spectacular scenery of the nation’s national parks.

Widforss took Mather’s suggestion to heart. In 1924, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. held an exhibition of his paintings depicting scenes from several western national parks, the California coastline, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. However, it was the Grand Canyon that commanded the artist’s greatest attention. Over the course of his career, Widforss became as much a fixture for some people as the canyon itself. An assistant chief ranger once said, “We have accustomed ourselves here at Grand Canyon to Gunnar’s occasional absence.” Widforss admitted that he felt a special affinity for the canyon and never tired of it.

When someone once suggested his paintings could use a little more imagination, he looked toward the Grand Canyon and remarked, “Could imagination improve on that?”

24 The Grand Canyon c. 1933 oil on canvas 36 x 41 inches

Ernest L. Blumenschein 1874–1960

A founding member of the celebrated Taos Society of Artists, Ernest L. Blumenschein fell in love with the Taos region during his first visit there in 1898. For Blumenschein and his fellow artist and traveling companion, Bert Geer Phillips, Taos had everything an artist could desire, and enough of it to last a lifetime. Though Joseph Henry Sharp had spoken of Taos to them while they sat in a Paris cafe years earlier, Blumenschein later described his own powerful first impressions: “Sharp had not painted for me the land or the mountains and plains and clouds. No artist had ever recorded the New Mexico I was seeing. No writer had ever written down the smell of this air or the feel of that morning’s sky.”

Over the course of his career, Blumenschein became one of the best-known artists working in Taos. Not hesitant to discuss

his work, Blumenschein frequently accepted invitations to speak at various venues around the country. He also enjoyed writing, allowing us the good fortune of knowing some of the thinking behind his artwork. He once wrote: “One great principle is the building of a structure. A kind of architecture—or music if you prefer. But a large intellectual basic harmony of form and color, that carries the theme or mood of the emotion the artist wants to express . . . But I tell you it must first be deeply felt. Then assembled and executed with great skill. If at the end of these efforts you have achieved Beauty that moves the spectator, you probably have done a good job and that’s what some of us [in] Taos lived for.”

—Ernest L. Blumenschein, from prepared lecture notes

25 Return to the Pueblo 1940 oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches

Victor Higgins 1884–1949

“The Taos are a people living in an absolutely natural state, entirely independent of all the world . . . Being so completely the product of their surroundings, they give the painter a host of fresh and original ideas . . . The country makes its inhabitants daring and lovers of the ‘chance.’ . . . The very air of the Taos country, its nearness to big works of nature, drives caution from a man’s brain. He ‘takes a chance.’ Perhaps this has led the Taos painters to be original and to be so devoted to the country and its people.” —Victor Higgins, 1917 Victor Higgins first visited Taos in 1914, on a trip sponsored by a Chicago syndicate of art supporters led by Mayor Carter Harrison. Enthralled by what he encountered there, he was determined to return. In 1917, Higgins and Walter Ufer, his Chicago friend and fellow artist, were elected into the Taos Society of Artists.

Throughout his career in northern New Mexico, Higgins was never complacent. His work evolved along progressive lines, and he used oils or watercolors for their particular qualities to compose paintings driven by form, order, and color. In mid-career, Higgins turned his attention to the landscape. For many of these paintings, he chose to use watercolors, enjoying the greater spontaneity of expression the medium allowed. Taos Landscape is from a series known as his “Little Gems.” While they were done in oil, they show a deft handling of the paint and the sense of freedom associated with his watercolor technique. For these paintings, Higgins worked outdoors from his car. After finding a suitable location, he would open the car’s trunk to shield himself from the sun, take out his paints and Masonite board, and work on the spot.

26 Taos Landscape c. 1940 oil on board 10 x 16 inches

Georgia O’Keeffe 1887–1986

“Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.” —Georgia O’Keeffe In the spring of 1929, Georgia O’Keeffe accepted an invitation from Mabel Dodge Luhan to visit her in Taos.

After the long trip from New York to New Mexico, O’Keeffe immersed herself in the local culture by going to dances at nearby pueblos, seeing displays of ancient pottery, and getting a general taste of the colorful life in both Santa Fe and Taos.

After 1929, she returned regularly to paint in New Mexico and purchased a home at Ghost Ranch and, later, in Abiquiú.

Over the many years that O’Keeffe worked in New Mexico, the cottonwood tree served as a source of inspiration. She painted it dead and alive, windblown and still, in groups, in a field, and as an individual subject. Cottonwood Tree — Near Abiquiu, was created in the 1940s, a decade during which the cottonwood theme inspired a great variety of paintings in numerous guises.

27 Cottonwood Tree — Near Abiquiu 1943 oil on canvas 36 x 30 inches

Gene Kloss 1903–1996

Master printmaker Gene Kloss created images for more than six decades. She dedicated herself to the subjects that surrounded her—the unique people and majestic landscapes of northern New Mexico and Colorado. During those years, she produced a range of remarkable imagery on more than six hundred copperplates using various techniques such as etching, drypoint, mezzotint, and aquatint, all in the service of a keen aesthetic impulse. For this work she was elected as a full member of the National Academy of Design, and she is widely considered to be among the greatest American printmakers of the 20th century.

Though less is known about Gene Kloss the painter, what

a painter she was! Every now and then, the master of black and white took out her paints—sometimes watercolors, sometimes oils—and applied the same strong aesthetic sensibility to her paintings that she did to her prints.

Arroyo Hondo, Taos, an oil painting on canvas, is undated.

However, parallels can be drawn from the stylistic execution of Kloss’s prints dating from the late 1930s to the early 1940s.

This beautiful painting, with its luxuriant warm colors and bold forms, affords an opportunity to appreciate the enormous extent of this artist’s talent. One of her few oil paintings, this work is extremely rare and a true treasure.

28 Arroyo Hondo, Taos c. 1940s oil on canvas 20 x 26 inches

William R. Leigh 1866–1955

“I stood alone in a strange and thrilling scene. At last I was in the land where I was to prove whether I was fit—worthy of the opportunity—able to do it justice—or just a dunderhead.”

—W.R. Leigh, describing his impressions while standing in Laguna Pueblo during his first visit to the Southwest It was a long, frustrating road for W. R. Leigh before a writer bestowed on him the name Sagebrush Rembrandt.

Having begun his art training at a very young age, Leigh set out to study at the Munich Royal Academy before his sixteenth birthday. After studying there for twelve years, he settled in New York and found work as an illustrator, something he had hoped to avoid. But the work gave him financial security— until magazines began using photographs.

Wanting very much to pursue painting, in 1906 Leigh arranged passage to the Southwest on the Santa Fe Railway. In

exchange, he gave the railway a painting of the Grand Canyon.

This trip was the first of many to the Southwest, for Leigh was greatly inspired by the scenes he encountered. He sought to absorb as much as possible of the life of various Pueblo Indians, as well as the Navajo. “It would be impossible to add, or take away anything,” he reported. “Everything was perfect.”

By 1910, Leigh had begun to explore and paint in other areas of the Rocky Mountains, adding hunting scenes and cowboy life to his subjects. Around the country, the frequency of his exhibits, along with his fame, grew. During the last five years of his life, Leigh finally achieved acclaim as a painter, his lifelong ambition. Some critics placed his work favorably alongside two other notable western artists: Remington and Russell.

29 Bulldogging 1945 oil on canvas 28 x 22 inches

Andrew Wyeth 1917–2009

“My aim is to escape from the medium with which I work.

To leave no residue of technical mannerisms to stand between my expression and the observer. To seek freedom from socalled free and accidental brushwork . . . not to exhibit craft but rather to submerge it; and make it rightfully the hand-maiden of beauty, power and emotional content.” —Andrew Wyeth The son of famed illustrator N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth grew up in a world of art and make-believe. Though as a child he was always drawing and painting, it wasn’t until he was in his mid-teens that his father began to give him valuable art instruction. Throughout his career, Wyeth was directed by his own certain instinct. Rejecting the more popular mid-century movement of abstract expressionism, he remained true to the spirit of his aesthetic calling with realist renderings in watercolor and tempera. Success greeted him early and steadily, with sold-out exhibits in New York galleries and inclusion in important museum exhibits. However, the sudden death of

his father in 1945 struck him severely. He resolved “to really do something serious.”

Prior to their marriage, Wyeth’s wife, Betsy, had introduced him to a friend of hers, Christina Olson. She and her brother lived in a weathered clapboard house that sat on the top of a hill overlooking the Maine coast. She had been crippled by polio. Wyeth reported being intrigued by the look of the house and began to paint there. When he asked Christina to pose with her back to him, looking toward the house, he created a painting that immediately captured his greatest audience with its underlying emotional power. Painted in 1948, Christina’s World is now in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In Olsons, Wyeth depicted the home again, this time from another vantage point. Still standing, and more than weathered, it looks as though it could be hollow, with one lone window showing through the building to the opposite side.

30 Olsons 1968 watercolor 18 x 281/2 inches

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