Oil on Canvas Painting of an Adobe House and Landscape [SOLD]

Early 20^th-century artists from the East and Midwest were drawn to New Mexico’s charming settings of a brown adobe building set amongst cottonwood and aspen trees, under a blue sky with billowing white clouds, and a backdrop of a mountain.  It was romantic, quiet, beautiful, restful, and begging to be captured on canvas.

That is just the scene Samuel D. Smith (1918-1999) captured in this small painting.  The low brown mud building is snuggled in a restful landscape of brown dirt and green plants.  Framing the painting is a flaming red tree and a brilliant yellow one.  The blue sky is almost obliterated with dark rain clouds.  The mountain in the background adds a solid anchor.  The red pitch-roof barn building behind the flat-top adobe identifies the location as northern New Mexico where snow accumulation is abundant.

Sam Smith was one of the most accomplished Albuquerque artists during the mid-20th century. He was a friend of Wilson Hurley, who had praised his artistic accomplishments.  He had moved to Albuquerque at the age of 7 years, and was associated with the University of New Mexico art department from 1956 until his retirement as a professor of art in 1984. He had studied with artists Randall Davey, Jack Levine, Ben Turner and Carl Von Hassler. 

Smith’s paintings have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Biltmore Galleries in Los Angeles, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, the Fine Arts Galleries at the University of New Mexico and the Roswell Museum and Art Center. His work can be seen in the permanent collections of the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas, Arlington State College in Texas, the Air Force Art Collection and the New Mexico State Fair Collection. His awards include the 1960 Oil Purchase Prize at the New Mexico State Fair, the Questa Purchase Prize in 1962, the Grand Award Prize at the Artist’s Alpine Holiday Show in 1964 and 1965 and the Grand Award at the Black Canyon Art Exhibition in Hotchkiss, Colorado.

Condition: The painting has just recently been professionally cleaned and is ready to hang and enjoy.  It is framed in a carved wood frame. 

Provenance: from a gentleman in Utah who inherited it from family

Recommended Reading: Masters of Western Art by Mary Nelson