Painting of the Day, December 5, 2011

By Donna Poulton

"It is not a country of light on things. It is a country of things in light." – Marsden Hartley

Modernist artist Marsden Hartley painted this still life of the New Mexico landscape glimpsed through his window in 1919. Reference to the land and its people can be seen centered in the composition. The blooming cactus, growing in a Santa Clara pot, sits atop an American Indian blanket on the table. This painting, estimated to sell at between  $7-$900,000, sold for a staggering $3,218,500 at a recent Sotheby’s Auction.

Credit ArtFixDaily.com

Marsden Hartley, Untitled (Still Life), 1919, oil on board, 32 x 28 in.

Painting of the Day, November 9, 2011

By Donna Poulton

"I paint the Indian as he is. In the garden digging--in the field working--riding amongst the sage--meeting his woman in the desert--angling for trout--in meditation" (Walter Ufer, American Art Review, June, 1999).

Credit: Coeur D’Alene Auction

Walter Ufer (1876–1936), In the Garden, c.1920, oil on canvas, 30.50 x 30.50 in.

Unlike his fellow artists working in Taos in the 1920s, Walter Ufer rejected the image of Pueblo people as idealized, opting to instead to show the native culture at work with such titles as: The Washer Women, A Pueblo Well Scene and In the Garden.

Painting of the Day, November 3, 2011

By Donna Poulton

"When I was a little boy and lived in Maine, I read everything about the West I could get my hands on - not dime novels, but everything authentic. I lived the life in prospect. Then I lived it in actuality, living with cowpunchers in Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona - all along the cattle strip. Now that those days are gone, I live it in retrospect and in my pictures." - W. Herbert Dunton

W. Herbert  “Buck” Dunton was a successful illustrator working for Scribner’s, Harper’s, and for Zane Grey before settling in Taos and becoming founding member of the Taos Society of Artists.  While his illustrations are more detailed and representative, his finished easel work is much more stylized.           

Credit: amica.davidrumsey.com

W. Herbert “Buck” Dunton (1878 – 1936), Fall in the Foothills, c. 1933, oil on canvas, 34 x 42 in. Collection of the AMICA Library

Painting of the Day, 31 October, 2011

By Donna Poulton

E. Martin Hennings studied at the Art Institute in Chicago and later in Germany before a commission took him to Taos, New Mexico where he ultimately settled. His exposure to the German Jugenstil also known as Art Nouveau seems to have influenced his landscape style in which the visual plane is flattened and the natural environment is patterned and curved. He was especially interested in the New Mexico Indians and painted them in nature for the remainder of his career.

Credit: wetcanvas.com

E. Martin Hennings (1886 – 1956), Riders at Sunset, (c.1935), oil on canvas, 30 x 36 in. Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gift of Arvin Gottlieb 1991.205.11