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A Journal for Classic Western Art
March/April 2014

WHAT'S GOING ON

 

What an exciting time to be  involved in historical American art! We are pleased to report that several museums are currently presenting exhibitions of historical western art of such significance that we thought we would devote attention to these exhibits for our readers. If any of you have the opportunity to visit one of those museums in the near future, we highly recommend them.

For this issue we have dedicated our lead article to providing you with an overview of  three major art exhibits currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum and the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum  in Oklahoma City. Other art exhibits are presented, as usual, in the Nationwide Exhibits section.

In addition to our focus on museum exhibitions, in this issue we offer you the chance to see a selection of our new acquisitions -- 19th and 20th century paintings and  an unusually large and elaborately carved cabinet by William Penhallow Henderson. You won't want to miss our online exhibition featuring diverse works by the Taos Society of  Artists. And further on you'll see information about two new excellent books along with a listing of selected exhibits and events in New Mexico during March and April.  

 

As always, please remember to stop by and visit us whenever you are in Santa Fe.
IN THIS ISSUE
WESTERN ART EXHIBITS
NEW ACQUISITIONS
TAOS SOCIETY of ARTISTS ONLINE
BOOK NEWS
NATIONWIDE EXHIBITS
LOCAL EXHIBITS
QUICK LINKS

CONTACT US

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EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY 


Art of the American West
Featured in Major Museum Exhibitions 
 
For anyone interested in art of the American West, these are good times. Major museums are currently hosting exhibitions that highlight the importance and the breadth of a genre once considered of only regional interest. No longer the case.

On exhibit now through April 13 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is "The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925," a show organized in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum, where it will be on display from May 11 through August 31, 2014. The exhibit then travels overseas to the Nanjing Museum in Nanjing, China.

Surveying the work of twenty-eight artists, the exhibit features over sixty bronze statuettes of various subject matter, but all representative of iconic western themes: American Indians, cowboys, settler-pioneers and animals. Co-curator of the exhibit, Thomas Smith of the Denver Art Museum writes that "there has never been a full-scale exhibition on this rich and complex topic. A century later, no segment of American sculpture remains more appreciated by the public." In addition to some of the most recognized names of western art, such as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, the exhibit presents fine examples from other artists who are not as well known for western subject matter. Among them are Henry Merwin Shrady, the celebrated  sculptor of the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial at the United States Capitol, and Paul Manship, known for his interpretation of classical subjects and the sculptor of the Rockefeller Plaza's famed "Prometheus" from 1933.
 

  
Hermon Atkins MacNeil (1866-1947)  
"The Moqui Prayer for Rain," 1895-96 (cast about 1897) 
Bronze
22 1/4 x 11 x 25 1/4 in.   
Daniel and Mathew Wolf in memory of Diane R. Wolf 
Photo courtesy of the Denver Art Museum



And there is Hermon Atkins MacNeil who created "Moqui Prayer for Rain" after his visit to Arizona where  he witnessed the Moqui (Hopi) people's annual prayer for rain at the mesa top village of Oraibi. The artist depicts a runner in mid-stride with snakes coiled around his arms and head, symbols of the lightning that brings rain to the arid climate.

The works of Taos artist Walter Ufer are in the spotlight in Oklahoma City at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum now through May 11, 2014. A large exhibition with works on loan from thirty museums in addition to private collectors, "Walter Ufer: Rise, Fall, Resurrection" marks the centennial anniversary of the artist's first trip to Taos, New Mexico, in 1914.

Curated by Ufer biographer, Dean Porter, Ph.D., the exhibit features a variety of paintings that span the artist's entire career, from his early days in Germany and Chicago, to the place with which he is most closely associated--Taos, New Mexico.  
 
                    
Walter Ufer (1876-1936)
"Summer Trail" 
Oil on canvas
20 x 24 inches
Signed lower right   
                    
 
A showcase of fifty paintings by Ufer, the exhibit also brings together works by his heralded colleagues from the Taos Society of Artists, selected students such as the Woolsey brothers, and his wife, Mary Monrad Frederiksen Ufer.
 
To continue, click here.    

NEW ACQUISITIONS   

 

 

 

 

 

 

William Penhallow Henderson (1877-1943)

Carved pine cabinet 

77 1/2  x 66 x 18 inches

c. 1929  

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

   

  

  

 

 

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

"The Lookout"   

Oil on paper on board  

13 x 18 1/2  inches 

Signed lower right 

 c. 1870 
 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bert Geer Phillips (1868-1956)

"Taos Indian with Pony"

Oil on board

27 3/8 x 21 3/4 inches

Signed lower right

c. 1930 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist Unknown 

"Day at the Track"

Oil on canvas

36 x 46 inches 

c. 1915 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 Marsden Hartley (1877-1943)

"New Mexico Landscape" 

Pastel on paper 

17 1/4  x 27 1/2 inches

Signed lower right and dated 1919 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971)

"Pinon - Grand Caņon"

Color woodblock print

12 3/4 x 12 3/4 inches

No. 46

1919 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turner Messick (1878-1951)

"The Open Door"  

Oil on canvas

23 1/2  x  19 1/2 inches

Signed lower right

c. 1925 

   

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fritz Scholder (1937-2005)

"Crow Indian" 

Acrylic on canvas  

80 x 68 inches

Signed lower right

1975

 

 

 

 

  

 

 To view more of our new acquisitions, click here. 

  

ONLINE EXHIBITION

 

Taos  Society  of  Artists

 

 

The small village of Taos in northern New Mexico had received its share of artist visitors during the second half of the nineteenth century, including a visit from Joseph Henry Sharp in 1893. But it wasn't until 1898 that two artists on a journey from Colorado to Mexico had a "fortuitous" accident and were forced to pay a visit to Taos. Their wagon wheel had broken in the mountainous terrain and Ernest Blumenschein, by the luck of a coin toss, had to go on horseback to Taos, carrying the wheel to get it repaired. On this unexpected detour, he experienced a kind of epiphany. It changed the direction of his life, his companion Bert Geer Phillips's life, and in the coming years, the nature of the village itself.

Believing Taos to hold everything an American artist could want--in terms of subject matter--Phillips immediately relocated to Taos, while Bluemenschein made annual sojourns until his permanent move there years later with his wife and daughter. During the next fifteen years, a wide array of artists would join them. The year 1915 marked the inaugural year of the formation of the Taos Society of Artists, founded by a group of six. In addition to Phillips and  Blumenschein, there were Joseph Henry Sharp, Oscar Edmund Berninghaus, Eanger Irving Couse and William Herbert "Buck" Dunton. Soon the group grew to include Walter Ufer, Victor Higgins, Julius Rolshoven and E. Martin Hennings, and later, Catharine Critcher and Kenneth Adams. Successful in exhibiting their works around the country, the Taos Society of Artists helped to bring to the wider American public a greater awareness of the region's beauty and the richness of its varied cultural cultures.

 

Joseph Henry Sharp (1859-1953)

"Elk Foot Jerry, Taos, New Mexico"  

Oil on cigar box lid  

8 x 6 inches

Signed lower right  

  c. 1915

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

Victor Higgins (1884-1949) 
"Aspen Grove" 
Oil on board 
14 x 15 inches 
Signed lower left
c. 1925 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eanger Irving Couse (1866-1936)

"The Drummer"

Oil on masonite

9 x 12 inches

Signed lower left

c. 1915 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oscar Edmund Berninghaus (1874-1952) 
"Indian on Horseback" 
Oil on board 
9 x 13 inches 
Signed lower right
c. 1930














 

E. Martin Hennings (1886-1956)  

"Stringing the Bow"

 Monotype on paper  

8 x 10 inches

c. 1925

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

   

Joseph Henry Sharp (1859-1953)

"Hawk Shield"

Oil on canvas

14 x 10 inches 

 Signed lower right

c. 1930  

 

 

   

   

 

 

To view the entire online exhibition, click here. 

 
BOOK NEWS

The American West in Bronze,
1850-1925

Thayer Tolles and Thomas Brent Smith
for the Metropolitan Museum of Art




A collaboarative project between the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Thayer Tolles) and Denver Art Museum's Petrie Institute of Western American Art (Thomas Smith), this book was produced in conjunction with their current exhibition by the same name (discussed in this issue's featured article).

If you cannot get to New York or Denver in time to see these bronzes in person, the exhibition book is the next best thing. It provides in-depth text along with photographs in multiple views of the works on display, all thematically organized: cowboys, Indians, settler-pioneers and animals.
A real showcase of exceptional bronze works, the exhibit and book include a large number of important artists of the medium, such as Frederick William MacMonnies, James Earle Fraser, and Cyrus Edwin Dallin, among others. Having the book with its printed photographs allows for a close-up view of the hand of each sculptor, something you can return to as often as you wish.
 

Also Recently Released  

The Pottery of Acoma Pueblo


Dwight P. Lanmon and Francis H. Harlow
Museum of New Mexico Press

Former Research Associate at the School for Advanced Research and Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Dwight Lanmon's most recent book, The Pottery of Acoma Pueblo, was a



collaborative effort with Francis Harlow. Using a great deal of material from the collections of the Indian Arts Research Center and SAR, the book provides illustrations and detailed text on selected  pottery examples made at Acoma between 1200 and the present day. Lanmon and Harlow have  remarkably identifed over 800 potters working from the mid 1800s through the 1900s.

Other books co-authored by this pair are The Pottery of Zia Pueblo, The Pottery of Zuni Pueblo, and with Duane Anderson, The Pottery of Santa Ana Pueblo. For anyone interested in Pueblo pottery, these books will be worth considering for your library; they are beautifully produced and reflect the most recent research on the subject.

MUSEUM NEWS NATIONWIDE  

  
Dallas Museum of Art
"Alexandre Hogue: The Erosion Series"
Through June 15, 2014

Alexandre Hogue is an artist whose career spanned much of the twentieth century. Although he was born in the midwest and trained in Minneapolis, he is most associated with Taos, Tulsa and Texas. Throughout his career he made many painting excursions to Taos beginning in 1926; he became head of the art department at the University of Tulsa in 1945. But the artist's ties are closest to Dallas where he lived and worked for many years, including a period as a cartoonist for the Dallas Times-Herald.

Hogue was profoundly affected by the Dust Bowl that ravaged the country's midsection in the 1930s. It was an environmental catastrophe that struck him deeply with lasting consequence. He responded to it by creating a series of works based on his concern for the Dust Bowl's effects--on people and the earth. "The Erosion Series" comes out of this period, which the exhibition's curator calls "some of the artist's most powerful imagery." The show includes paintings, some from the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, such as "Drouth-Stricken Area," as well as Hogue's preparatory drawings for paintings in the series that help to show the artist's working process from the conceptual start to the finished work.

De Young Fine Arts Museums
San Francisco

"Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George"
Through May 11, 2014

After meeting, and later marrying, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe spent a great deal of time at the Stieglitz family estate in upstate New York overlooking Lake George. It was a place where she went for relaxation as well as for work. The curator remarked that O'Keeffe's time at Lake George, from 1918 until the . . .

To continue, click here.
NEW MEXICO EXHIBITS & EVENTS   
SANTA FE

Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

"Heartbeat: Music of the Native Southwest"
Through September 8, 2015

"Heartbeat: Music of the Native Southwest" is an unusual museum exhibit dealing with sound and movement, presenting over 100 objects relating to Southwestern Native music and dance. The exhibit details how the various instruments, drums, flutes, rasps, and rattles are used in ritual performances along with the clothing worn for the rituals--explaining how each of these elements plays an important role in fulfilling the ritual performance.

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
"Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawai'i Pictures"
Through September 14, 2014

Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams each devoted a part of their careers working in the Hawaiian Islands, producing a body of work not typically associated with them. This exhibit explores how O'Keeffe and Adams approached their new landscape: O'Keeffe on an advertising assignment in 1939 and Adams on different commissions in 1948 and 1957. By showing the work side by side, the viewer is able to appreciate what kind of effect the new location had on each--whether the location affected the artist or the artist imposed herself or himself on the landscape. And quite possibly, some of both.

AND

"Geogia O'Keeffe: Abiquiu Views"
Through September 14, 2014

This is an installation of paintings that will change throughout the exhibition period. "Abiquiu Views" displays O'Keeffe's myriad treatments of her own property in Abiquiu, including images just outside her home, her patio and the black door along the adobe . . .

To continue, click here. 

 

Thank you for joining us.   

 

Please send us your comments and     

 

stop by the gallery next time you are in Santa Fe.