Original Painting “Along the Pueblo Road” [SOLD]

Ellis was living in Santa Fe at the time of his death. He was a well-known resident, painter, printmaker, teacher, and a co-founder of Los Cinco Pintores, which consisted of five painters who moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the early 1920s and established Santa Fe as a famous art colony. They were Josef Bakos, Will Shuster, Walter Mruk, Willard Nash and Fremont Ellis.

Ellis is known for rich, colorful, impressionistic landscapes that do not display a modernist edge evident in much of the work of his Cinco Pintores colleagues. A classic Ellis painting will feature a large display of trees in the foreground, backed by mountains. It is quite rare to see human figures in his work. When humans are included, a sense of romanticism is evoked.

This small painting by Ellis is very powerful in its dark array of evergreen trees backed by white billowing clouds and brightened up by colorful blankets worn by the two Indians walking in the foreground.