The Legendart Artists of Taos: The Founding of New Mexico's Famous Art Colony and Its Pioneer Artists; Expanded From the Pages of American Artist

This book reveals the lives and careers of the pioneer artists who settled the Taos art colony at the turn of the century. In February 1978, American Artist magazine devoted an entire issue to the "Pioneer Artists of Taos," which quickly sold out and became a collector's item. Because of the popularity of this subject, Mary Carroll Nelson continued her research. Now she has enlarged the scope of her original work, detailing the history of many of the artists that followed. At the turn of the century in Paris, three fellow art students met at the Academic Julien: Joseph Henry Sharp, Bert Geer Phillips, and Ernest L. Blumenschein. Sharp had been attracted to Taos several years before when he painted the Indians there. His exciting descriptions of the unspoiled beauty of the land and its Indian and Spanish heritage so intrigued the two other men that, three years later, Phillips and Blumenschein went to see it for themselves. They were entranced; the emotions they experienced were almost mystical in nature. As they told their vivid tales of the land, other artists were gradually drawn to the area. At first they visited only periodically; then, one by one, they settled there permanently. Phillips was the area's first permanent resident. Besides Sharp and Blumenschein, other artists came late: Oscar E. Berninghaus, E. Irving Couse, William Herbert Dunton, Victor Higgins, Walter Ufer, Catherine Carter Critcher, E. Martin Hennings, and Kenneth Miller Adams. Together they formed the Taos Society of Artists. Later the area soon attracted famous artists like Andrew Dasburg, Leon Gaspard, and Nicholai Fechin, Robert Henri, John Marin, and Marsden Hartley. This is a major study of their lives, their art and the legends they created, as well as a fascinating examination of the unique relationship between the Taos artists and their love affair with the land and its people.