Cochiti Pueblo Male Basket Dancer [SOLD]

This painting is titled Basket Dance on verso and it features a single male dancer.  The Basket Dance is performed by the Winter People at San Ildefonso around Easter time.  This appears to be a later painting by Tonita Vigil Peña (1893-1949) Quah Ah as determined by her signature with the cartouche of a pottery design. By indicating this to be a later painting, we mean 1930s to mid-1940s, as she passed away in 1949. 

Tonita was an exceptional painter.  She was the only female painter amongst a group of men painters.  She well illustrated that she was as competent a painter as any of the men.  She has been praised for her fine detail and the expertly rendered faces she painted.  Her attention to detail is easily demonstrated when looking at the evergreen neck ruff and the branch held in his hand.

Quah Ah did not have an easy life.  She lost her mother and sister when she was 12 years old and then her dad sent her from San Ildefonso, her native pueblo, to live with an aunt and uncle at Cochiti Pueblo, so she essentially lost her father at that time as well.  She had to learn new customs, dances, songs and even a new language, Keres, was spoken at Cochiti, rather than her native Tewa Language.

In 1908—at just 15 years old— Peña married Juan Rosario Chavez, who was 20 years old.  Chavez passed away three years after their marriage.  She married Felipe Herrera in 1913.  He died in a work accident in 1920.  Her third husband, Epitacio Arquero, outlived Tonita by a few years.  They had a loving marriage and produced five children.

Tonita was the very first female painter from the New Mexico Pueblos.  It is often stated that Pablita Velarde was the first female painter, but Tonita was 25 years old, married, painting, and selling paintings when Pablita was born in 1918.

This painting pairs well with our Item #C3868K (click here to view now), which is a single figure male drummer of the kind seen accompanying the dancers in the Basket Dance.  If someone wishes to purchase the pair, we would have the drummer reframed to match the dancer at no additional cost to the purchaser.

Condition:  very good

Provenance: this Cochiti Pueblo Male Basket Dancer painting is from a family from Albuquerque

Recommended Reading:  Tonita Peña by Samuel Lewis Gray