 |
Taos Painters: Gerard Curtis Delano (1890-1972)
A descendant of Pilgrim stock, Gerard Delano was born only 20 miles from Plymouth Rock in Marion, Massachusetts in 1890. He started drawing Indians on horses at the age of four, which he continued to do his entire life. Delano's first art training started at the Swaine Free School of Design after selling his first illustration to Life Magazine. In 1910 he became a pupil of George Bridgeman at the Art Students League in New York City. He then studied with illustrators Dean Cornwell, Harvey Dunn and N.C. Wyeth at the Grand Central School of Art. He continued working in New York City as a successful commercial artist and illustrator until 1919.
Delano's first trip to the West was to the mountains of Summit County, Colorado in 1919 to work as a ranch hand. In 1920, at the age of thirty, he homesteaded a piece of land at Cataract Creek and built a dirt-roof studio. Commuting to New York for commercial assignments, he was receiving commissions from leading magazines such as Ace High and others which he eventually did the covers for. Then the Depression hit and publishing houses and magazines began to close. Delano could not pay his bills and moved back to Colorado permanently.
Gerard Curtis Delano Grazing Sheep Navajo in the Lonesome Land Watercolor
Gerard Curtis Delano, Grazing Sheep Navajo in the Lonesome Land, Watercolor, c. 1958, 9
Gerardcurtisdelanopaintings.com ~
Site Info
Whois
Trace Route
RBL Check
|
 |
Taos Painters: Warren Eliphalet Rollins (1861-1962)
Warren Rollins was born and raised in California. He studied under Virgil Williams at the San Francisco School of Design, eventually becoming the Associate Director of the school. After studying in the East, Rollins moved to San Diego, where he began to paint Indian scenes, basing his work on his travels in the western states.
Warren Rollins Drawing Sailboats at Harbor
Warren E. Rollins, Sailboats at Harbor, Crayon on Paper, 13
Werollins.com ~
Site Info
Whois
Trace Route
RBL Check
|
 |
Taos Painters: Henry Francois Farny (1847 - 1916)
Henry Farny was born in Alsace, France, the son of a political refugee who to emigrated to Pennsylvania when Henry was six years old. As a child, he enjoyed a friendly relationship with a nearby band of Senecas, which began his life-long fascination with Native Americans.
In 1859 Farny's family moved to Cincinnati where he later took his first job as an apprentice lithographer. By the time he was eighteen, Harper's Weekly has published a two-page view of Cincinnati that Farny had drawn. After briefly working for Harper's in New York, Farny decided he needed more advanced art training. In 1867 he traveled to the Royal Academy in Dusseldorf, Germany where he spent three years studying under Herman Hartzog and Thomas Read, and painting beside John Twachtman and Frank Duveneck.
Returning to Cincinnati in 1870, Farny resumed his illustration career working for local publishers as well as Harper's Weekly and Century magazines. Other illustration commissions ranged from such projects as circus posters to McGuffy's Eclectic Readers, the most widely used grade school texts of the 19th century.
In 1881 Farny learned that the great Lakota leader, Sitting Bull, had turned himself over to the US military and was being held at the Standing Rock Agency. Hoping to meet Sitting Bull and learn more about the Ghost Dance movement, Farny journeyed up the Missouri River to North Dakota, but arrived after Sitting Bull had been moved to Fort Randall. Nevertheless, Farny was enchanted with what he did find, and used the opportunity to make sketches and collect artifacts for use in his studio paintings back in Cincinnati. From this time on, he devoted much of his time to recording scenes of Plains Indian life.
Farny made his next Western trip in 1883 to illustrate a Century magazine article about the completion Northern Pacific Railroad's transcontinental line. Part of the celebration included ceremonies at the new territorial capital at Bismarck where he finally met Sitting Bull who delivered an address through an interpreter. Continuing west on the railroad with a group of dignitaries including Ulysses S.Grant, Farny sketched views of the Crow Reservation at Grey Cliff, Montana Territory which also became illustrations for Century.
Subsequent Western projects included views of a trip down the Missouri River from Helena, Montana to Fort Benton, and portraits of Zuni leaders for articles about the Pueblo by the famed anthropologist, Frank Cushing, both for Century magazine. Although Farny drew the Zuni portraits in Washington, D.C. when his subjects were visiting the Smithsonian Institution, he did travel to Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory in 1894 at the invitation of General Nelson Miles to paint the Apaches being interned there. Among his most famous works from this trip is a watercolor sketch of Geronimo, signed by the famous chief.
After about 1890, Farny discontinued most illustration work in favor of easel paintings depicting the Plains Indians that he had met, lived with, and studied in the previous decade. Considering his training, it is no surprise that his work falls solidly within the romantic realist tradition of the late 19th century. His paintings-most commonly in gouache and transparent watercolor-are highly detailed representations of Native life free of negative effects of reservation living. Although his images are idealized in this way, they are not overtly romanticized or dramatized like those of most other
Henryfarny.com ~
Site Info
Whois
Trace Route
RBL Check
|
 |
Taos Painters: Frank Joseph Vavra (1892-1967)
Frank J. Vavra was born in St. Paul, Nebraska in 1892. When he was seven, his parents moved with their three boys to Cheyenne, Wyoming. The wild and rowdy atmosphere of this pioneer town continued to influence Vavra's paintings long after he left there. Franks' parents were fond of the arts and encouraged their son's interest in painting. They were from Prague, Czechoslovakia where Frank's maternal grandfather had been a landscape gardener to Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria-Hungary.
Cheyenne didn't offer much in terms of art instruction, so Vavra taught himself how to paint. His experiments at making his own paints failed badly, but they became encouragement to study with a professional artist. Upon graduating from high school in 1917, Frank had little time to ponder his career direction as World War I started and he enlisted. Less than a year into his military service, he was seriously wounded and was gassed in the Argonne Forest of France and then sent to a hospital in Vichy, France to recover. In an unexpected twist of fate, Vavra met a student of Claude Monet's there named Pillan. For the next year of his arduous recovery, the two became friends and Pillan answered many of the beginning painter's questions. By the time Vavra was released to go home, he not only had a keen appreciation for making the remainder of his life worthwhile, but was resolved to make the formal study of art his priority.
He enrolled in the Denver Art Academy where for three years he studied with John E. Thompson, Robert Graham, Professor Rennell and Henry Carter of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. While at the Academy he met and married Kathleen Huffman, who was an accomplished artist in her own right. She was employed as a fashion artist at the Denver Dry Goods Company. The next few years were spent with Frank living off a small Army pension while trying to establish himself in the art world.
By 1929, Frank had a modest following and was selling his paintings, but grew restless with city life. His desire to live closer to nature and the need for introspection prompted his purchase of a building in Insmont, near Bailey, Colorado. He remodeled this humble building into an artistic studio-home which Frank, Kathleen and their new daughter moved into in 1930. During the years up until 1942, Frank learned to paint the peaceful and beautiful scenes of nature he experienced all around his mountain home. While living in Insmont, the Vavra's had two more children. With the threat of another war and a child that needed specialized medical attention, the couple moved back to Denver in 1942.
Beginning with realistic work and looking at the non-objective work completed later in his life, Vavra was mostly remembered for his impressionistic landscapes of the Southwest. For the last year of his life, Frank painted murals for the Olinger Decorating Company as he continued to paint and teach others from his Denver studio. He died in 1967 at the age of 75.
Frankvavra.com ~
Site Info
Whois
Trace Route
RBL Check
|
 |
Taos Painters: Leola Hall Coggins (1881 - 1930)
Hall Coggins was born in San Leandro, California and studied privately with the artists William Keith and Raymond Yelland.
The step-daughter of a contractor, twenty-five year old Leola Hall saw entrepreneurial potential in the housing boom east of San Francisco Bay where many families fled after the earthquake of 1906. Between 1907 and 1912 she built dozens of Craftsman style homes in the Elmwood section of Berkeley. Though untrained in architecture, she designed the houses, purchased the land, supervised construction, and sold the homes herself. One of her last projects was the
Leolacoggins.com ~
Site Info
Whois
Trace Route
RBL Check
|
|
|
|
Site Info
