During the late 1800s and early 1900s, many aspiring American artists studied abroad in prestigious French and German academies. There, they sketched the human figure and copied historic works of art, but they also learned about newer, more unconventional styles, such as the spontaneous brushstrokes and pure colors of impressionism. The artists in this section studied in Munich and Paris but searched for subjects that they considered uniquely American when they returned. The remote northern New Mexico town of Taos proved particularly spellbinding. Attracted to the area’s expanses of mountains, vivid sunlight, and Indigenous and Hispanic cultures, six painters formed the Taos Society of Artists in 1915. Global politics also informed this choice. When World War I closed European borders between 1914 and 1918, artists who might have sought training and inspiration abroad turned instead to the American West.
E. Irving Couse (American, 1866–1936)
Moonlight in Taos, 1920
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Roath Collection, 2013.98
William Herbert Dunton (American, 1878–1936)
Evening on the Range, before 1925
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Gift from Dr. George C. Peck and Catherine M. Peck, 2013.465
Victor Higgins (American, 1884–1949)
Taos, New Mexico, ca. 1921
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Gift from Dr. George C. Peck and Catherine M. Peck, 2013.462
Mabel Dodge Luhan, a patron of the arts who lived in Taos, wrote that Victor Higgins “can say more with his pearly tones than most painters do with the whole solid color scale.” Here, Higgins evokes crisp winter air with his “pearly tones” and throws sloping hills into contrast with sharp blue shadows. A sturdy line of adobe architecture nestled beneath soaring mountains underscores what Luhan called the artist’s “dramatic appreciation” of the region’s sublime landscapes and its indomitable people.
Victor Higgins (American, 1884–1949)
Game Hunter (Snow), 1922
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen Collection, 2001.440
E. Martin Hennings (American, 1886–1956)
A Friendly Encounter, ca. 1922
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Roath Collection, by exchange; The William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen Collection, by exchange; funds from Henry Roath, Lanny and Sharon Martin, 2013 Collectors’ Choice, and The Second Decade Fund, 2014.28
Bert Geer Phillips (American, 1868–1956)
Pueblo Indian Girl and Wild Plum Blossoms, before 1912
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Roath Collection, 2013.111
In 1898, Phillips left Denver with his friend Ernest Blumenschein on his way to Mexico for a sketching trip. Delayed in Taos by a broken wagon wheel, he was entranced by the landscape and people and never left. In this painting, his favorite model from Taos Pueblo wears the dress of a married woman: a cotton manta draped over one shoulder and belted at the waist, with tall white deerskin boots.
E. Martin Hennings (American, 1886–1956)
The Rabbit Hunt, ca. 1925
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen Collection, 2001.449
Born in Chicago, E. Martin Hennings studied in Munich and traveled through Europe before visiting Taos in 1917. Rather than placing Indigenous peoples in an imagined past, Hennings observed their lifestyle in the present. In this painting, a dark storm fills the background and pushes the brightly lit foreground figures toward the viewer. We see not only a contrast in atmosphere but also of cultures: the male figures wear traditional moccasins and blankets as well as modern clothing like a tennis sweater and necktie.
Joseph Henry Sharp (American, 1859–1953)
Summer Visitors, ca. 1919
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Roath Collection, 2013.115
Oscar Edmund Berninghaus (American, 1874–1952)
Indians Threshing Wheat—Taos, ca. 1921
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Roath Collection, 2013.96
Albert Bender (Cherokee):
This painting, completed by Berninghaus around 1921, illustrates the attempt by the US government to assimilate Native Americans into European-American culture in the early 20th century. The threshing of wheat was a non-Indigenous American farming technique.
Oscar Edmund Berninghaus was well known for his artistic renderings of Indigenous Americans. This painting was of the Taos Pueblo Indians in northern New Mexico during this period. The Taos people were and are very traditional to this very day. When the painting was done, they were trying to reach an accommodation for survival in the cultivation of wheat, a non-Native food plant that originated in the Middle East.
Berninghaus early in his career became captivated by Native American culture, and the Taos Pueblo were among his favorite subjects. There is little doubt that he wanted to record significant changes in Indigenous practices in his works. He was also a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, a non-Indian organization of visual artists established in 1915.
Taos Pueblo is an ancient settlement that was founded more than two thousand years ago, and the aboriginal food crops were mainly corn, beans, and squash.
At the time of the painting, the federal government had been pursuing an assimilation program that included the replacement of traditional food crops because of the cultural ceremonies associated with them. This government program began in 1790, shortly after the founding of the republic.
Indigenous peoples, particularly in the western states, were encouraged to raise wheat, hence the very thought-provoking painting by Berninghaus recording this change.
Walter Ufer (American, born in Germany, 1876–1936)
My Back Yard, ca. 1921
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Roath Collection, 2013.116
Walter Ufer, who trained in Chicago and Europe, spent many summers in Taos before moving there permanently. In this backyard view of Taos, he paints flat adobe walls in broad, glossy strokes that capture the heat of midday. These contrast with the stippled brushstrokes in the blue sky and the softly billowing clouds. The different surface treatments animate what would otherwise be a mundane subject of everyday life.
Ernest L. Blumenschein (American, 1874–1960)
Landscape with Indian Camp, 1920, reworked 1929
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Roath Collection, 2013.137
E. Irving Couse (American, 1866–1936)
Crouching Indian by a Fire, ca. 1910
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: Funds from 1986 Collectors’ Choice, 1986.8
Like many American artists of his time, E. Irving Couse trained in traditional French art academies. When he moved to New Mexico, he brought those conservative painting habits with him: he worked in a studio from models that he posed with props, he preferred to paint the human form with as little clothing as possible, and he banished almost all signs of the modern world from his work. Couse romanticized his subjects, often picturing one or two figures absorbed in activities such as bead-making, basket-weaving, playing music, and hunting, or in a state of calm reverie in nature.
Joseph Henry Sharp (American, 1859–1953)
The Red Olla, ca. 1925
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: William D. Hewit Charitable Annuity Trust, 1989.148
Ernest L. Blumenschein (American, 1874–1960)
Eagle Fan, 1915
Oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum: William Sr. and Dorothy Harmsen Collection, by exchange, 2001.446
In the mid-1890s, Bert Geer Phillips, Ernest L. Blumenschein, and Joseph Henry Sharp met while studying in Paris. Sharp had earlier visited Taos and boasted of its beauty and rich subject matter. Phillips and Blumenschein would accidentally make their way there in 1898 when, en route to Mexico, their wagon wheel broke about twenty miles outside of Taos. As the now-legendary story goes, they flipped a coin to determine who would take the broken wheel into town, and Blumenschein lost the toss. Eagle Fan was painted in the same year that he and others established the Taos Society of Artists.
