Original Painting “Autumn Cottonwoods, Rio Grande” [R]

Arthur William Hall was a Texan by birth but spent his childhood in Oklahoma and Virginia.  He attended the Chicago Art Institute, where he met his future wife, Norma Bassett. His early art career was interrupted by World War I during which he served in southern France.  His exposure to France at that time resulted in the Halls going to Europe in 1925 where they stayed for two years.  It was in Europe that Hall was exposed to the etching process, a technique he would continue throughout his art career and for which he is most famous.

In 1944, the Halls moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and settled in a two-hundred year old adobe house and studio that was the former home of artist Gerald Cassidy.  They remained in Santa Fe until 1950 at which time they moved to a small village between Santa Fe and Taos.

Norma Bassett Hall passed away in 1957 and Hall remarried in 1963.  From that time until his death in 1981, Hall worked exclusively in watercolor.

This watercolor of cottonwoods at the Rio Grande in autumn was probably painted during the few years that the Halls lived on Canyon Road in Santa Fe—1944-1950—because there is a gallery label on verso that reads 922 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The painting is in a hand-carved wood frame that is original to the painting.

Condition:  appears to be in original condition but has not been examined out of the frame.

Provenance: from an art collector in Albuquerque