Taos Society of Artists

Founders of the Taos Society of Artists

Taos Art Museum opened in 1994. In 2002, it moved to the beautiful and historic Nicolai Fechin home. The Museum is dedicated to the art of early twentieth century Taos.

The heart of the museum is a collection of paintings by the masters of the Taos Society of Artists. Virtually all full and associate members of the Taos Society of Artists are represented in the Museum’s collection. This group was prolific, from the arrival of Blumenschein and Phillips to Taos in 1898 through the 1930s.

TAOS SOCIETY OF ARTISTS HISTORY

The artist Joseph H. Sharp first visited Taos while on a sketching trip in 1883, and was captivated with its enchanting atmosphere. He is often referred to as the artist who "started it all." Later, while studying in Paris, he shared his enthusiasm with two artist friends, Bert G. Phillips and Ernest L. Blumenschein. As a result of a broken wagon wheel on September 3, 1898, the two artists stayed in the Taos area instead of completing their scheduled trip to Mexico.
Back in Paris, Blumenschein met E.I. Couse and told him of a mystical mountainous region. This inspired Couse to also explore Taos. Oscar E. Berninghaus joined the Taos artists and with the addition of Herbert Dunton, a painter of cowboys and ranch life, the "Founding" group numbered six. On July 1, 1915 the first meeting of the Taos Society of Artist was held. The proposed purpose of the association was to promote the showing and sale of their work.

The group then met Walter Ufer and Victor Higgins and voted them in as Active Members in July of 1917. Julius Rolshoven became an Associate Member in 1917 and then an active member in 1918. E. Martin Hennings became an Active Member in 1924. The only woman of the group, Catherine C. Critcher, became an Active Member also in 1924. And Kenneth Adams, the last and youngest of the group, became a member in 1926, only one year before the group disbanded.

Bert Geer Phillips was the first of the group to take up year-round residency in Taos in 1898. He opened doors by establishing close relationships between the Native Americans and artists who joined him in succeeding years. He is represented by a vividly colored portrait, Warbonnet Shadows.

Cincinnatian Joseph Henry Sharp, the 'ethnographer' of the Taos artists, stated: "If I don't paint them [the Native American] no one ever will." In this effort, he painted more than 10,000 canvases, many of which are three-quarter portraits such as Montana Blackfoot Indian.

Eanger Irving Couse was nearly as prolific as Sharp. In 1920 he stated, "My interest has always been the domestic side of the Indian rather than the usual conception of the Indian always on the warpath." He was the first to achieve a national reputation through his success in the National Academy of Design's juried exhibitions. He also created twenty-three images, similar to Fireside Indian, that were reproduced on the Santa Fe Railway's annual calendars. He popularized a kneeling Native American in interior settings, illuminated by man-made fire.

These paintings are beautiful examples of how three artists with strong academic backgrounds produced striking and sometimes romanticized canvases of Native Americans

After Ernest Blumenschein's initial visit to Taos in 1898, he and his wife traveled to Europe and returned to Taos seasonally until the late 19010s. His European training as well as his mature work in Taos is represented in the collection, notably Taos Landscape. In the 1920s, critics referred to Blumenschein as a decorative painter, a reference to his bold form of modernism. In addition to painting, he was also deeply involved as a violinist. In his Indian ceremonials and landscapes, the viewer is made conscious of his interest in strong colors, bold forms, and poetic rhythms.

With a background in commercial illustration, the St. Louis-born Oscar E. Berninghaus, an acute observer of life in and around Taos, painted Watching the Ballgame. Berninghaus claimed that he was "infected with the Taos germ" and was "fascinated by the people, the Indians and Mexicans, the adobe architecture, the sagebrush, the mountains, they all inspired me as a subject matter." Baseball was a favorite community pastime for Native Americans, Hispanics, and Caucasians alike. In fact, when fellow artist Blumenschein wasn't painting, trout fishing, or playing the violin, he played on the Taos team until he was fifty.

Two paintings by another highly respected illustrator, William Herbert "Buck" Dunton, the "cowboy" painter of Taos, are among the highlights of the collection. Dunton's Portrait of John Reyna depicts the seated Native American in a three-quarter view, dressed in ceremonial costume. He is highlighted by a handsome bonnet and all the trappings of a proud chieftain. The oil sketch for McMullin, Guide (in the Stark Museum of Art in Orange, Texas) is one of a half-dozen studies that Dunton did for his monumental canvas of the hunter and his hounds. Few artists put greater effort into a canvas. The oil sketch is remarkable for its bold, spontaneous brushwork, freshness, and authenticity.

The German-born Walter Ufer excelled when painting small canvases. Despite their size, he did not consider Taos Indian (In a Peafield) or Kit Carson House to be preliminaries for larger compositions. Ufer wrote, "I do not make any small sketches of my models first but put my full vitality and enthusiasm into the one and original painting." In fact, Taos Indian (In a Peafield), depicting his favorite model and friend, Jim Mirabal, is meticulous in its detail. Rather than romanticizing him, Ufer painted Jim as he found him. By comparison Kit Carson House is a loosely painted, impressionistic vignette of the street Ufer lived on.

In the 1930s, Taos was devastated by the Great Depression. It wasn't long before the artists discovered that their patrons, if they had liquid assets, were seldom spending on art. One of the most impoverished artists in Taos was the Indiana-born Victor Higgins. Yet, in 1932, despite his economic woes, Higgins painted two of his most important canvases: Winter Funeral (at the Harwood Museum of Art) and Indian Nude. While Winter Funeral was applauded by the New York press, Indian Nude earned the praises of Chicago Herald Examiner critic Inez Cunningham. When Higgins exhibited it in the Chester H. Johnson Galleries in Chicago and Grand Central Galleries in New York, she predicted "a Phoenix Higgins arising out of the ashes of his own past to, one dares not yet say, what heights of intellectual and emotional fire. He is one of those fortunate few who flower in maturity."

Like Ufer and Higgins, Chicagoan E. Martin Henning's first trip to Taos in 1917 was sponsored by the former Chicago Mayor Carter H. Harrison II and his syndicate. The Cottonwoods by Hennings pictures seasonal changes in foliation that challenged Hennings with a wealth of pictorial opportunities. He chose fall months when the leafless cottonwoods created a network of fan-shape branches. Bathed in the brilliant New Mexico sunshine, the branches turn a silvery-tan and create wonderful shapes against piercing blue skies.

Following the Taos Society Artists

During the 1920s and 1930s, there was an influx of artists who showed tendencies toward modernism. Andrew Dasburg arrived in Taos in 1918 and was a key proponent of Modernism. Influenced by the works of Paul Cezanne, he brought the cubist aesthetic to Taos. Kenneth Adams, Ward Lockwood, Barbara Latham, and Howard Cook were some of the artists influenced by Dasburg. They came to Taos and spent their careers there. Lockwood, Latham, and Cook eventually settled in Dasburg's neighborhood on the north Talpa ridge. All of the artists could be seen painting the Picuris Mountains to the south, patterns created by strip farming, and adobe houses seemingly growing out of the terra firma.

Following the arrival of this initial group of artists, the Taos area has grown to become a renowned international art market and artists' community. It is presently estimated that there are more artists, per capita, in the Taos area then in any other city in the world, including Paris, France.

The Taos Art Museum completes its 'set' of paintings by Taos Society Artists members with examples by Julius Rolshoven, Catharine Carter Critcher, and Kenneth Adams. Of the associate members of the Taos Society of Artists, there are paintings, drawings, and prints by Robert Henri, Randall Davey, Albert Groll, B.J. O. Nordfeldt, Gustave Baumann, and Birger Sandzen.