Zaplin Lampert Gallery - Exceptional - Fall 2021

EXCEPTIONAL September 2021

EXCEPTIONAL September 2021

Ernest L. Blumenschein

1874–1960

Ernest Blumenschein’s “Cottonwoods in the Square” captures a sunny moment in his beloved Taos, New Mexico. The view depicts the main road connecting Taos and Santa Fe and is site specific, with the corner of Pueblo Sur and Quesnel in the lower left. The vantage point is from above, as though we are rooftop spectators. On this particular day, it appears something special might be going on in town, bringing many people to the streets, perhaps headed for Taos Plaza.

Despite so much activity in the painting, Blumenschein titled it, “Cottonwoods in the Square,” suggesting the trees as his main subject. Indeed, the golden cottonwoods, shimmering in the sun, command a central place in the scene. Yet, beneath those trees, woven into the complex of shadows and sunlight, are two large groups of people adding a dappled

array of colors. As if this were not enough, he included horses and riders, even automobiles, creating a scene that bursts with rhythmic vitality.

An essay, “Taos in the 1920s,” provides insight into the artist’s thoughts: “Blumenschein did have a set of what he called ‘fundamental principles’ that he applied to all his work. The color needed to ‘sing,’ as he put it, and needed to be used instead of perspective to establish planes. The design should be vigorous, not soft or pretty. Lines should be ‘rhythmical’ and ‘masses large’ and in ‘good proportion.’”

In this painting, Blumenschein applied those principles to extraordinary effect.

Cottonwoods in the Square c. 1935 Oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches Signed lower left

E. Martin Hennings

1886–1956

“The mountains with their canyons and streams, the sage beneath the clouded skies, the adobe village with its Spanish people, and of course the Taos Pueblo with its Indians, . . . I believe I find my greatest inspiration,” E. Martin Hennings wrote.

“Sunlit Hills” is a classic Hennings painting: lush with foliage in modulations of glorious color and sumptuous forms accompanied by figures on horseback — two shadowed and one in the blaze of sunlight — perhaps, wending their way to the Taos Pueblo. We don’t know for sure. But Hennings also gave a prominent place in the scene to the dark-hued mountains in the background, identifiable as Taos Mountain and Grasshopper Peak, imposing landmarks in whose

presence the people of Taos Pueblo have lived for centuries.

According to art historian and curator, Peter Hassrick, Hennings “eschewed identity with the modernists of his day . . . His modernism remained faithful to the tenets of art nouveau, whose grace and elegance he found resplendent in the Taos landscape and flora, and in the Indian blankets and pottery.” It is likely those qualities, along with Hennings' attention to composition, his handling of the effects of light and shadow, that have long attracted the art lover. Remarkably, “Sunlit Hills” has been in the collection of one family since it was purchased directly from the artist by the family patriarch who was an avid collector of Southwestern art.

Sunlit Foothills c. 1930 Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches Signed lower left

William R. Leigh

1866–1955

An Eastern artist who pursued a similar discipline of training at the Munich Academy as E. Martin Hennings and Walter Ufer, W. R. Leigh was likewise captivated by the American Southwest. After his first trip in 1904, when he visited the villages of Acoma and Zuni, and ventured among the Navajo, he described his reaction: "It would be impossible to add, or take away anything, to heighten the fabulous picturesqueness; color, line, massing, distribution — everything was perfect. . . . I saw that I must so far as possible be a sponge; . . . in short, absorb all that it was humanly possible to absorb. I started in to paint, paint, paint."

Though W.R. Leigh mainly worked and exhibited in New York, today he is primarily known for his Southwestern

paintings. “In the Land of the Navaho” shows an artist who seems to be enthralled with both his subject matter and the process of painting. His brushwork is at once exuberant and masterful. With big, animated brushstrokes, he captures the unrestrained motions of a loose flock of goats.

The shepherd, sitting on an outcropping of sandstone, is delineated with greater refinement, his face reflecting quiet concentration. Further, with seemingly minimal gestures, Leigh manages to show the folds of his bright headband and a silver necklace around his neck. Set against the cerulean blue sky, the shepherd’s dark red shirt makes him stand out majestically, creating a striking focal point within this colorful pastoral composition.

In the Land of the Navaho, Keams Canyon, Arizona 1919 Oil on canvas on board 131/4 x 163/4 inches Signed lower right

Thomas Moran

1837–1926

By the time Thomas Moran visited Yosemite Valley, it was already well known, the subject of numerous articles and images created by artists and photographers. Geologists, especially, were attracted by its enormous granite formations, evidence of the earth’s primordial powers, and subsequent glacial disruptions. Moran, too, was familiar with some of it, having created illustrations from photographs for Scribner's Magazine. But, once he went there for himself in 1872, he was struck by its picturesque characteristics and he would return several times after, always with sketching supplies.

The image Moran presented in “Tuolumne River Near the Head of the Great Cañon,” (today a location within Yosemite National Park) suggests that it was precisely the raw power of nature that inspired this composition. With masterful

brushwork, he conveys the forces and their effects: the flow of turbulent water, strewn boulders, a huge granite dome sliced through. Even the clouds in the sky appear thick and menacing. Ingeniously, Moran granted one opening in the clouds. With that small patch of blue, we can be assured the storm will pass, and clear skies will return.

This painting bears the hallmarks of Moran's working method. According to his biographer, “it was Moran's custom to build his paintings up with successive layers — ‘only by repeated painting,’ he held, ‘can a man get the quality of nature.’ There was much glazing with pure color over white, a process which gave his surfaces their remarkable luminosity.”

Tuolumne River Near the Head of the Great Cañon c. 1890 Oil on paper mounted on board 123/4 x 93/4 inches Signed lower left with artist’s cypher

Thomas Moran

1837–1926

Thomas Moran was a tireless traveler, perpetually searching for subjects that he could use to express his feelings about the natural world — not just the beauty of nature — but also, its awe-inspiring qualities. Rising to prominence in the 1870s for his spectacular paintings of the Yellowstone region and Grand Canyon, he continued thereafter to make excursions to the West.

In the spring of 1900, he and his daughter traveled to Colorado, then to New Mexico. His biographer wrote that, after visiting Laguna Pueblo, the two “took a dirt road south to the pueblo of Acoma on its rock mesa, nearly four-hundred feet tall. . . .

In the distance to the left beetled the vast cliff of Kat-zí-mo, or the Enchanted Mesa, its top virtually inaccessible. Moran

sketched its imposing form, but it was Acoma that really aroused his enthusiasm. In it he had discovered a subject for several future canvases.” Considering Moran’s total output, his New Mexico paintings are among the most rare.

For “The Rock of Acoma, New Mexico,” Moran used watercolors, a medium in which his artistic temperament was realized with consummate skill. We can sense the sheer mass of rock, made all the more impressive by the entrance of the riders on horseback, their small forms delicately rendered. By casting light over the figures, Moran enhances the effect. At the top of the distant mesa, conveyed by diminishing clarity, the village of Acoma appears as if it rests in the clouds.

The Rock of Acoma, New Mexico 1902 Watercolor 137/8 x 197/8 inches Signed and dated lower left

William Gollings

1878–1932

Bill Gollings didn’t just want to be an observer, painting scenes of the American West, he wanted to experience the western way of life. But Native American tribal traditions, cowboy life on the open range, were quickly changing, and he knew it. In 1896, he journeyed westward. He later wrote: “I rode the range and worked on a ranch or drove stage or trapped in the winter. . . Once in a while during these years, I longed to paint, but the free open life I was leading held me fast.”

Once he’d made up his mind to become an artist, Gollings worked at it with fierce determination. Charles M. Russell and Joseph Henry Sharp served as artistic role models, and both influenced his work. Critiques from Sharp motivated

him to closely analyze his colors until he'd gotten them just right. As art curator James T. Forrest observed, Gollings “created some of the most poetic winter landscapes with Indians, horses, tepees, and hills ever produced by any American artist.”

“Indian Encampment” of 1920 conveys the hand of a master and is among his most poignant works. The serene beauty of the scene draws the eye into the canvas, beginning with the softness of the horses' winter coats, to the delicately rendered leafless bushes, beyond which a lone figure approaches tepees in the distance, while smoke mingles with the heavy morning air, rising up to a radiant sky of pastel-colored clouds.

Indian Encampment 1920 Oil on canvas 24 x 18 inches Signed and dated lower center

Andrew Dasburg

1887–1979

In “Autumn, New Mexico,” Andrew Dasburg portrays an idyllic scene that radiates with beauty. Using his meticulous eye and thoughtful analysis for the subject, Santa Fe at the foot of Sun Mountain (Monte Sol), Dasburg paired a warmtoned color palette with forms that create an interplay between the linear and voluptuous aspects of the setting, resulting in a composition at once vibrant and enticing.

Overall, the painting is a masterful realization of Dasburg's ideas underlying Cubism, based on his careful study of the paintings of Paul Cézanne. His goal, described in his teachings and in essays, was to capture the abstract balance, harmony, and rhythm at the core of nature. Art historian Sheldon Reich noted the artist's achievement, writing

that Dasburg's principles were “carried out in a series of impressive New Mexico landscapes done in the decade of the twenties. . . . Dasburg, in New Mexico, was searching for the dynamic equilibrium of rhythmic and static forces.” Such qualities are abundantly apparent in this work of 1925.

A member of the Stieglitz circle in New York City, by the 1920s, Dasburg’s artwork had begun to command the attention of critics, collectors, and museum curators. In 1925, Gertrude Whitney — founder of New York's Whitney Museum of American Art — presented his first solo exhibit, and in 1927 he was the only American artist awarded a prize (third) at the Carnegie International Exhibition, behind Henri Matisse, who took first prize.

Autumn, New Mexico (Monte Sol) 1925 Oil on canvas 241/4 x 30 inches Signed lower center

Nicolai Fechin

1881–1955

From the beginning of his career to the end, it was the human spirit that stirred Nicolai Fechin’s soul. The artist’s facile brushwork served his keen eye, allowing him to render his subjects in a dynamic manner, yet with sensitivity and penetrating depth of character. Though he painted a vast number of people, according to his biographer, “children were one of Fechin’s favorite subjects. Childhood is an organic condition free from the pressures of time, social constraints, and world order. A child is regarded as the highest manifestation of the unspoiled.”

Notably, “Portrait of Eya” was painted before the artist left his native Russia. In the period from 1919 to 1922, just

prior to his emigration, Fechin painted a small number of portraits of his young daughter, Eya. His first and only child, she was born in Kazan in 1914, on the cusp of WWI and the Russian Revolution. By 1920 the young family had been through years of political, economic, and social tumult that brought tremendous hardship. One can only imagine what the artist was thinking while painting the lovely, rosecheeked child before him, with such bleakness still on the horizon. Fortunately, in 1923, Fechin was allowed to leave the newly formed Soviet Russia and bring his family to the United States. After four years in New York, they moved to Taos, setting the artist on the path that would engage him for years to come.

Portrait of Eya c. 1920–1922 Oil on canvas 211/2 x 201/2 inches Signed lower right

References Ernest Blumenschein “In Contemporary Rhythm: The Art of Ernest L. Blumenschein” Chapter 3, “Chasing Rainbows: Taos in the 1920s” by Peter H. Hassrick Andrew Dasburg “Andrew Dasburg: His Life and Art,” Sheldon Reich Nicolai Fechin “Nicolai Fechin: The Art and the Life,” Galina P. Tuluzakova Elling William “Bill” Gollings “Bill Gollings: Ranahan Artist,” James T. Forrest E. Martin Hennings “A Place in the Sun: The Southwest Paintings of Walter Ufer and E. Martin Hennings” Chapter 4, “The Country He Loved Best: A Biography of E. Martin Hennings,” Karen Brooks McWhorter Chapter 5, “Taos and the Art of E. Martin Hennings,” Peter H. Hassrick William Robinson Leigh “My Life,” unpublished autobiography by W. R. Leigh, as quoted in “William Robinson Leigh: Biography of a Western Artist,” Delmer Duane Cummins, doctoral dissertation, University of Oklahoma, 1974 Thomas Moran “Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains,” Thurman Wilkins

©2021 Zaplin | Lampert Gallery Design Alex Hanna, Invisible City Designs Photography James Hart Writing Stacia Lewandowski

651 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 505.982.6100 zaplinlampert.com

651 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | 505.982.6100 | zaplinlampert.com