Adobe Gallery, Santa Fe

It was a treat to return to Adobe Gallery in Santa Fe last week. We had last been there in August during Indian Market, when the gallery hosted a reception and book signing for us.

Al Anthony

I wanted to see if Al Anthony had any new Tahoma paintings that I had not seen yet–yes, he did. It is called Indian Love Call. The painting, created in 1955, is similar to one painted in 1956 with the same name that is in our book, Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist. The main difference is that it is a mirror image. The painting is done in bright, bold colors and uncharacteristically for Tahoma, shows a scene that is Plains Indians (complete with teepees) rather than his own Navajo people.

And I wanted to ask Al about another Quincy Tahoma painting he recently sold  because he had told an interesting story on his web site about the owner. I was particularly interested in learning who had purchased that painting. (It is a losing battle, but Charnell and I TRY to keep track of the hundreds of Tahoma paintings.)

The Adobe website said that they acquired this  painting of a Navajo brave on a horse from an artist from Santa Clara Pueblo who had been a friend of Tahoma’s. The two of them were riding to Taos to sell two of Tahoma’s paintings, when a drink was spilled on one of the paintings. The artist friend took the “ruined” painting and kept it.  Now, more than 50 years later, the artist had decided to sell the Tahoma painting.  Adobe Gallery was able to have a restorer remove the stain so that the painting looked as good as new.

When I went in to see Al Anthony, I asked if he knew any more about the painting. He revealed that the artist-owner of the painting was a woman, and he surmised that she was Tahoma’s girlfriend back when they were riding in a car to Taos. (She must have been driving, since we have been told that Tahoma was always reluctant to learn to drive because of his impaired left arm).  He promised to contact the painting’s original owner and see if she would talk to us about her friendship with Tahoma.

Then I asked who had bought the painting.  It was purchased for the Buffalo Thunder Casino outside of Pojaque Pueblo, north of Santa Fe. It is very appropriate that Tahoma’s painting should find a home in a casino belonging to one of the pueblos, since he spent so much time with friends from the pueblos.

You can see several other paintings that illustrate how Tahoma copied his own creations when you look through Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Second photo taken by T. Harmon Parkhurst of his studio

The previous post zeroed in on a photograph of T. Harmon Parkhurst’s studio provided by Marilyn Casabonne. It contained a historical treasure-trove of Quincy Tahoma paintings.  What could be better?  How about two more Parkhurst photos that show many more Tahoma paintings?

Spearing Dinner, 1946. Courtesy of a Private Collector.

In the second photo, the superimposed red number 1 (right side, large painting framed with white matte) identifies a 1946 painting entitled Spearing Dinner.  Originally purchased by Bernalillo trader James Silva and now in the hands of a new owner, it can be seen on page 199 of the book Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist. Other paintings in this snapshot are similar to ones I have seen (or photographed while researching Tahoma’s art), but there were no additional exact matches.  The same holds true for the third and last photo of the series.

Cropped portion of the third snapshot of Parkhurst's studio

I cropped the final snapshot  so the reader could see the photograph, outlined by a red box, that T. Harmon Parkhurst took of Quincy Tahoma.  This official portrait of the Navajo artist appears on page 184 of the book, where it has a special place of honor in the Epilogue.

Autographed photo of Quincy Tahoma, now known to be taken in 1946, Courtesy of the Family of Richard G. Jones.

Tahoma gave a signed copy to Dick Jones, with whom he became friends during their imprisonment in 1947.  Also, a large color version of the portrait currently is on display at Adobe Galleryin Santa Fe through September 20, courtesy of collector Mark O. Rosaker.  Clearly, this portrait started as a T. Harmon Parkhurst photograph and it was probably colored using Marshall oils (the popular technology in the 1940s and 1950s, folks!)

Portrait of Quincy Tahoma on display at Adobe Gallery, Courtesy of Mark O. Rosacker

It’s possible that Quincy Tahoma himself colored the portrait, since he reportedly did that type of work for photographer Parkhurst. So, thanks to Marilyn Casabonne, several mysteries have been solved by these three photographs of the Parkhurst studio.

• We now know that they were taken in 1946, as was the portrait of Tahoma .
• We also know that Quincy Tahoma’s ability to create similar (look-alike) scenes from memory was even more developed and astonishing than we had previously thought.
• And we know that T. Harmon Parkhurst was one of Tahoma’s best cheerleaders, featuring his watercolors throughout his studio on Don Gaspar Street.  We have known for quite some time that Tahoma’s art sold quickly, so the abundance of his paintings in Parkhurst’s photos speaks to how prolific an artist he was.

How exciting is it to unravel bits and pieces of history from three 8×10 black and white photos  60+ years old?! All rights are reserved for all photos used in this post. If you want to compare these paintings and the Tahoma portrait, you can purchase the book from the Buy Now box on the right hand top of the page. We would love to locate some of the other Tahoma paintings shown in this pictures. Even with more than 250 of Quincy’s paintings featured in Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist, we know that there are many we have never located. Do you have any leads for us? (Reminder: if you are reading this in your e-mail, you will need to click over to the website to respond).

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Post by Charnell

Marilyn Casabonne with her parents, photo by T. Harmon Parkhurst

Marilyn Casabonne smiled as she sorted through her parents’ Santa Fe memorabilia. Her mind floated back to early childhood days when her family and photographer T. Harmon Parkhurst spent many weekends at a mountain retreat.  Parkhurst snapped a picture of Lyn at age three with her parents at one of those gatherings and to this day, more than seventy years later, it hangs in a place of honor in her home.

Lyn’s sorting produced more than sweet memories of her childhood.  She found three well-preserved black and white 8 x 10s taken by Parkhurst of his studio sometime in the 1946-1950 timeframe. Those photos answer several of the questions Vera and I had about the years the photographer let Navajo artist Quincy Tahoma paint in a loft of his studio on Don Gaspar street in Santa Fe.

One wall of the Parkhurst Studio circa 1946

The first glimpse inside Parkhurst’s Studio shows Tahoma’s paintings displayed on two walls, beside a painting by another (unknown) artist; many Navajo Indian rugs; pieces of pueblo pottery; and a professional photograph by Parkhurst.  The door toward the end of the main wall suggests a depth to the shelf on which the pottery is displayed, and that area may indeed have served as Tahoma’s loft during the early- to mid- 1940s.

If you click on the Parkhurst photo to enlarge it, you’ll find that I’ve superimposed red numbers at the tops of three paintings.

Buffalo Hunt, 1945. Accession #: 2003.153.2. Gift of Duane and Beverly Miller to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

Number 1 is the 1945 Buffalo Hunt painting owned by Duane and Beverly Miller until they donated it in 2003 to the famous  National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.  We received permission to use the digital image too late to include it in the book Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist, but here it is for you to enjoy.

Number 2 is a 1946 Buffalo Hunt painting currently owned by the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa.  I photographed that painting when I visited the Philbrook several years ago (and therefore can verify it’s the same one as is in this photograph) but cannot include it in this post in the absence of reproduction rights.

Cut-out of the painting (labeled #3) in the Parkhurst Studio photo

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Last week Charnell wrote about Tahoma’s illustrations for Elizabeth Willis DeHuff. Although we were delighted to find Tahoma’s  charming pictures at the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections at the University of New Mexico library, we were disappointed that these lovely little pictures of Navajo family life would not be available to the public. Since the book was never published, you cannot see the work that he did for DeHuff outside of the archives.

Original Book Cover

However, you can own illustrations that Tahoma created for another children’s book.  I Am a Pueblo Indian Girl  holds a unique position in the collection of children’s literature that Rebecca Benes documented in Native American Picture Books of Change.

A young Isleta Pueblo woman known in English as Louise Abeita, and in her native tongue as E-Yeh-Shure (Blue Corn) wrote I Am a Pueblo Indian Girl when she was only 13 years old. Her father pulled together the Apache and Navajo artists and put together the book. That makes this perhaps the first totally American Indian publication for the general public.

The book’s introduction, written in 1939 by noted ethnologist Oliver LaFarge, points out that it had only been twenty years since an ethnologist introduced water-color painting  to Pueblo Indian artists.

Although copies are now rare, an Internet search uncovers a few copies of the 72-year-old book in various conditions.  I found a very good copy on Amazon a few years ago. I treasure it for the paintings of young artists that would one day become famous and for the beauty of the words.

One unsigned painting with a deer peering out of a formalized forest at the edge of a cliff certainly looks like the work of Tahoma. Two swallows fly overhead, and those birds were to become Tahoma’s trademark. The far away mountains and buttes definitely look like Tahoma’s landscape, and the pleasing combination of browns, turquoise, and orange resemble Tahoma’s use of color.

Quincy Tahoma painting of three deer (1937)

But the painting I love most shows three deer under a feathery tree with ducks swimming in a pond in the foreground. Again, two swallows balance the top. He signed the painting of deer ”Tohoma ’37, ” spelling his name “To” instead of “Ta” as he did a few years later.  This painting closely resembles one that you can find in Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.

The painting in the children’s book  illustrates a poem called Beauty, written by the young Pueblo girl author.

The poem says in part: “Beauty is in yourself, Good deeds, happy thoughts That repeat themselves In your dreams, In your work, And even in your rest.”

If you have read what we wrote in Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy, you may recognize the same concept as Hózhó–the all-important Navajo quality of harmony and beauty in one’s life.

Gerald Nailor (Navajo, 1917-1952) and Allan Houser (Apache, 1914-1994), the other two budding artists in this book, like Tahoma (Navajo, 1917-1956), painted their offerings in the late 1930′s. All three were very young and went on to become very famous.  You can see the natural genius of all three of these American Indian painters already shining through the illustrations for this unique children’s book.

Have you ever collected books just because of the illustrations? Do you know of other books illustrated by American Indians that you could share here?

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Navajo family at meal time, from the Elizabeth Willis DeHuff Collection, Center for Southwest Research

Dorothy Dunn, the art teacher who founded The Studio at Santa Fe Indian School, had a profound impact on student artist Quincy Tahoma and his contemporaries in the 1930s.  But the movement to allow and encourage Indian children to draw scenes of their own tribal experiences started more than a decade earlier under the influence of Elizabeth Willis DeHuff.

Before 1920, Indian boarding schools pushed children to assimilate into non-native life. But after that date, the Bureau of Indian Affairs slowly began to encourage students to learn their own history and culture, as well as that of other Americans.

About 1916, John David DeHuff became superintendent of the Santa Fe Indian School and his wife, Elizabeth Willis DeHuff, quickly became interested in the local art and culture, as well as in the students who attended the school.  Then in her mid twenties and educated as a teacher at Barnard College in New York, Elizabeth began inviting boys from the school into her home for afternoon painting lessons. Students that received training under her wing included Fred Kabotie, Otis Polelonema (both Hopi) and Velino Shije Herrera (of Zia Pueblo).

Controversy apparently erupted around Elizabeth’s art instruction and methods when critics alleged that her painting sessions encouraged paganism, emphasizing traditional stories and documenting tribal religious customs. Students painted symbols, figures, stories, dances, ceremonies, and designs of their heritage. As the controvery mounted, her husband assumed a civic position in Santa Fe, and Elizabeth ceased working directly with students.

Her interest in Native American cultures was still alive, however, and her relationships with many of her former students continued. During the 1920s, she had written and published several children’s stories on Native American themes. Her books included illustrations by her former students,  Fred Kabotie and Otis Polelonema.

More than a decade later, in Quincy Tahoma’s senior year (1939-40) at Santa Fe Indian School, Elizabeth Willis DeHuff, then living in Connecticut, arranged to have the Navajo artist paint illustrations for another children’s book she was planning.

Creating a sand painting inside the hogan, from the Elizabeth Willis DeHuff Collection, Southwest Center for Research

The full series of Tahoma’s 1940-42 paintings of this family are housed in the Elizabeth Willis DeHuff Collection at the  Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque.  One can see how prescribed the composition of these paintings must have been, as there are no backgrounds in outside scenes, which is in sharp contrast to other 1942 Tahomas (see the book Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navao Artist  for his typical 1942 paintings.  You can buy it at independent bookstores, museum shops and here by using the BUY NOW button in the right hand column of the blog. Remember you have to be at the blog site to buy.)

Even though these paintings were prescribed and his imagination somewhat constrained, Quincy Tahoma did a great job in depicting life of this Navajo family.   The movement to preserve Indian heritage and educate children through stories was so compelling that author Rebecca C. Benes published a reference book in 2004 entitled Native American Picture Books of Change: The Art of Historic Children’s Editions documenting the history and evolution of the picture story books emanating from Indian boarding schools.

Where have you seen picture story books used effectively to educate adults, as well as children, about an important subject?

Remember, if you are reading this in your e-mail or on Facebook and want to comment or purchase a book, you need to click through to the blog site.

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Quincy Tahoma:The Life and Legacy of a Navjo Artist

Tahoma Book Contest

We have a winner in the contest sponsored by Wandering Educators. The newest owner of a Tahoma book is Casey Barber, who comments here frequently and also subscribes.  You can see Casey’s food stories at the blog she does with a partner, Danielle Oteri. Good. Food. Stories. Ironically, their recent story on fried dough sounds suspiciously like Navajo fry bread.  Get your recipe at the link. Congratulations Casey and thanks, Wandering Educators!       —————-

Indian Art Talk in Flagstaff

I also want to thank Jan Musial, a Flagstaff Arizona Navajo art dealer who invited me to speak to a private tour group last weekend.  Jan has a gorgeous home in the tall pine trees outside of Flagstaff, and it was a perfect, sunny and just- right- temperature day. We enjoyed a catered lunch in his forested back yard with sculptures hiding in plain sight among the trees.

Vera with Jan Musial and his sculpture, Woman in Love

Then we went inside where he displays his magnificent collection of Navajo art. I talked about the five Quincy Tahoma paintings that Jan allowed us to use in Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist. Here is just one of them.

1941 Summer Salary, Courtesy of Jan Musial

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

‘Tis a Puzzlement!

1955 burro scared by skunk, Courtesy of Jeff Carnal

Navajo artist Quincy Tahoma loved to paint scenes where a horse or burro was scared by a skunk, causing the poor thing to bolt and race off for the next county — hopefully outrunning the spray.

We know this because Tahoma’s thumbprint signature in the lower right corner of the painting always shows the ensuing scene or the “next chapter”, as he called it.

Burro running away after seeing skunk

Rider thrown after skunk surprises horse

Interestingly, though, when the surprised horse has a rider, the cartouche shows the rider being thrown from the horse.  Why such a different conclusion to the scene?!!  Was it because his own father was thrown from a horse that was frightened by a snake?

1945 Bad Lucks back, Courtesy of Charnell Havens

And why did he write on the backside of some 1945 paintings Quincy Tahoma of Arizona and then show his address as Santa Fe?

Why indeed did the next chapter of some buffalo hunts show the warrior being chased on foot by the buffalo, while in others, the hunter was carting his prize home atop his horse? In yet a third conclusion, several hunters sit around a campfire and enjoy their meal.

Different results from buffalo hunts

What determined who was lucky and who was not?

‘Tis a puzzlement!

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.

1953 The Navajo Scout, Courtesy of Mark O. Rosacker, was painted while Tahoma was in Santa Fe's US Indian Hospital

How about this one?

1955 deer in the moonlight, Courtesy of Mark Rosacker

How would you like to win the book with these and more than 160 other full color paintings by Quincy Tahoma?(NOTE: THIS CONTEST IS LONG GONE. SORRY IF YOU MISSED IT, but read on to see more of Tahoma’s paintings.)

You have THREE chances to win a totally FREE copy of Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.

Our friends over at WANDERING EDUCATORS have offered to give away one copy of Quincy Tahoma’s biography. Wandering Educators is the wonderful web site that provides information about cultural travel that benefits every reader and traveler, educators and students, parents and children, and you can read their interview of the co-authors of Tahoma’s Biography.

Here’s the scoop:

1. Winner must be over 18 years old and a resident of the United States.

2. You can enter in three ways–but only one entry in each manner.

• Leave a comment at the end of this post.
• Subscribe to Quincy Tahoma Blog by Email [Note: Subscribe by clicking that link, or if you are already subscribed, make a 2nd comment below that says "I'm already a subscriber and want to win the book."
• Make a comment at Wandering Educators on their interview of us about they why and how of writing Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist.

3. Remember, if you are reading this in an e-mail, on Facebook, or somewhere other than at the Tahoma Blog site, you need to click on the title to go to the Tahoma Blog site in order to comment and win.

4. Contest runs from June 3, 2011 until midnight Central Daylight Time on June 11. The winner will be announced at Tahoma Blog and at Wandering Educator on June 13, 2011. That's it!  Good luck! Picture yourself browsing through paintings like these:

1952 Kings of the Stallions, print Courtesy of Charnell Havens

1944 Baby Antilope (sic), by Quincy Tahoma, Courtesy of Charnell Havens

©2012 Quincy Tahoma Blog. All Rights Reserved.