Original Painting “Earth Mother Harvest” [SOLD]

What had been an art form exclusively for ceremonial and secular life at San Ildefonso Pueblo prior to 1900 became an art form for the public.   It was at the San Ildefonso Pueblo day school in 1900 that Esther Hoyt, a U. S. Indian Service teacher, distributed paints and paper to her students and encouraged them to paint pueblo ceremonial dances.  Within a decade, these students were selling paintings to the public. 

Around 1918, students at the Santa Fe Indian School were invited by Elizabeth DeHuff, wife of the school’s newly-appointed superintendent, to paint at her home.  This was a kindness by her but violated Indian School policy.  The government policy was not to encourage such as it wanted to assimilate the Indians and discourage their religion and ceremonial life.  Her policy resulted in damaging her husband’s career. The students benefitted and the Santa Fe public supported their endeavors. 

A year later, the first ever exhibit of Pueblo Indian paintings took place at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe.  Mabel Dodge Lujan, a newly arrived resident of Taos, purchased every painting in the exhibit.  By 1920, Pueblo Indian painting was an established art form and has continued to be so for over 100 years.  During the 1920s decade, exhibits of Pueblo Indian paintings were held in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other large cities.

The San Ildefonso Pueblo students were the first to appear and they have remained the most important of the pueblo painters to date.  The best known of these early painters are Crescencio Martinez (Táe, 1879-1918), Alfonso Roybal (Awa Tsireh, 1898-1955), Abel Sanchez (Oqwa Pi, 1899-1971), Louis Gonzales (Wo-Peen, 1907-1990), Julian Martinez (Pocano, 1885-1943), Romando Vigil (Tse Ye Mu, 1902-1978), Richard Martinez (Opa Mu Nu, 1904-1987) and the only female, Tonita Peña (Quah Ah, 1893-1949).  Wo-Peen was the youngest of the group.

Wo-Peen painted actively in the late 1920s but an accident that caused the loss of his right hand caused him to cease painting in the 1960s.  His short career resulted in production of fewer paintings of any of the group from San Ildefonso.  There were few. painted during his career and fewer on the market today.  This painting is only the third by this artist the gallery has ever had.

Wo-Peen titled this painting on verso Earth Mother Harvest.  The imagery consists of a figure of Earth Mother wearing a radiant tableta over which is a rainbow ending in rain clouds.  In her right hand she holds a full corn plant and in her left a bunch of wheat-like stalks.  Around her feet are vines with watermelon and squash.  The painting is signed in lower right Wo-Peen.  It is double matted and framed in a wood frame.