The Taos Society of Artists gave much of America
its first glimpse into the diverse cultures of the high plains
based on first-hand knowledge, and Ernest Blumenschein was
a driving force behind this talented and perceptive group.
This important association of classically-trained artists might
never have come together had it not been for an accident that,
in hindsight, was most fortuitous.

Ernest Leonard Blumenschein’s journey to Taos, where he
produced many of his best known works, actually began early in
his life. Born in 1874 and raised in Dayton, Ohio, the son of a
successful musician and chorus director, Blumenschein exhibited
great musical talent at a very young age. Encouraged by his
father to pursue this as a career path, he was accepted as a
scholarship student at the Cincinnati College of Music at age 17.
However, Blumenschein soon became convinced that his true
calling was art. Much to his father’s dismay, he moved to
New York to enroll at the Art Students League, although he did
earn a living playing first violin in the New York Symphony,
under the world famous conductor and composer Antonín Dvorák.

His passion for painting quickly led him to the Académie Julien
in Paris, where he studied alongside Bert Geer Phillips,
E. Irving Couse and Joseph Henry Sharp. As young artists
training under demanding instructors while enjoying the
intoxicating atmosphere of late 19th century Europe, they had
no idea what major roles they would play as colleagues later
in life. Sharp had already visited the American Southwest,
and his accounts of exotic and untamed environs inspired a desire
in Blumenschein to experience them firsthand.

After his studies in Paris, Blumenschein developed into a very
successful illustrator, and his work was much in demand in the
New York magazine publishing world. He also excelled at tennis
and bridge, reflecting his ability to strategically meld physical
and intellectual attributes, which served him throughout his
career. As luck would have it, he was sent to the Southwest on
an illustration assignment. This experience ignited a creative
flame which was to illuminate the rest of his life and work.
In 1898, the 24-year-old Blumenschein convinced Bert Phillips
to set out with him in a covered wagon to explore and paint
the Southwest.

They were in northern New Mexico, on a steep road eroded by
late summer rainstorms, when a wheel broke. Blumenschein set
out on horseback to find a blacksmith in the nearest town,
which happened to be Taos. As he rode along, his senses were
completely captivated with the sights, sounds and smells of
the land, sky and atmosphere surrounding him.

Once he and Phillips got their wagon into Taos, they went
no further. They began painting and meeting many of the
local residents, including Indians from the Pueblo and
Hispanic settlers. Although fascinated with these cultures and
the environment, Blumenschein left after three months to
return to Paris and New York to study and work, eventually
illustrating books authored by Jack London, Willa Cather and
Joseph Conrad.

On one of his sojourns to Paris he met Mary Shepard Greene,
a successful and celebrated artist in her own right.
They married in 1905 and their creative partnership flourished
back in New York, where they both exhibited widely and taught
at the Pratt Institute. But the call of New Mexico was strong,
and Blumenschein spent every summer in Taos.

Mary was frightened of the Indian tribes, as many Easterners
were in those days, and chose to remain in New York until 1917,
when she, Ernest and their young daughter Helen relocated
permanently. Ten years later, acclaimed by such eminent
institutions as the Gilcrease Foundation in Oklahoma, the
New York Academy of Design, the Fort Worth Art Museum
and the Chicago World’s Fair, he was elected a member of the
National Academy, the pinnacle of artistic achievement
at the time.

Although his paintings traveled the country and the world,
Blumenschein’s art developed in concert with his intimate
knowledge of the history, landscape, cultures and peoples
of northern New Mexico, reflecting these personal experiences
and relationships in compositions of intense light and color.
Initiated by Blumenschein and Phillips, and active from
1912 to 1927, The Taos Society of Artists provided a new
perspective on the American West and its inhabitants— one less
forbidding and more welcoming, less terrifying and more human.

The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
and the Smithsonian Institution are among the myriad
preeminent museums that currently own and exhibit
Blumenschein's work. The Jonson Gallery at the University of
New Mexico, the Harwood Museum of Art and the Museum of
New Mexico join The Albuquerque Museum of Art and History
as regional exhibitors of his work as well.