FROM A PRIVATE COLORADO COLLECTION. WILLIAM HERBERT DUNTON (American, 1878-1936). Winter Day (La Loma - Taos), 1926. O...

Description

FROM A PRIVATE COLORADO COLLECTION

WILLIAM HERBERT DUNTON (American, 1878-1936)
Winter Day (La Loma - Taos), 1926
Oil on artist's board
8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm)
Signed lower right: Dunton
Artist label verso: Winter Day (La Loma - Taos)

PROVENANCE:
Acquired from the artist;
Thence by descent.

EXHIBITION:
Hotel Paso del Norte, El Paso, March 1926.
Galveston Art League, Galveston, Texas, March 28 - April 11, 1926.

LITERATURE:
J. Schimmel, The Art and Life of W. Herbert Dunton, 1878-1936, Austin, 1984, p. 159 and p. 249.

Winter Day (La Loma-Taos) is an excellent example of W. Herbert Dunton's genius and would make a fine addition to any collection of American art. La Loma references a small neighborhood just west of the Taos Plaza where Dunton had his home and studio, La Solana, beginning about 1922. Other Taos artists lived on or near La Loma, including Joseph Fleck, Blanche Grant, Kenneth Adams, and Oscar Berninghaus. The adobe buildings pictured in the background depict the La Loma neighborhood, perhaps from the vantage point of Dunton's La Solana studio. The two horses in the foreground appear to be Dunton's grey, Pet, and his bay, Lady.

Winter Day (La Loma-Taos) is related directly to at least two other Dunton winter scenes of identical size: Winter in Taos at the Stark Museum of Art and Plaza de Taos at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. Dunton frequently expanded his finished compositional sketches into larger canvases, and it is possible there may be a larger version of Winter Day (La Loma-Taos). This small canvas is painted in Dunton's mature, Regionalist style. By the late 1920s, Dunton was consistently simplifying and stylizing shapes, as seen in the adobe buildings in the background and the horses in the foreground. This painting also shares characteristics with contemporaneous paintings by other Taos artists, specifically Victor Higgins as seen in his work Taos in Winter.

Michael R. Grauer
Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs/Curator of Art
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum
Canyon, Texas



More information about WILLIAM HERBERT DUNTON. See also: Dunton, William Herbert, Dunton, W. Herbert, William Herbert Dunton Artist.



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