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.