Special Value Offer: Original Painting of a Female Buffalo Dancer [SOLD]

Special Value Offer: The consignor of this painting has authorized a price reduction of 20% from the original price of $1750 to a new price of $1400.

Tonita Vigil Peña (1893-1949) 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 Pueblo, her native pueblo, to live with and 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 because Keres was spoken at Cochiti rather than Tewa from San Ildefonso. 

Her first husband, Juan Rosario Chavez, whom she married when she was 15 years old and he 20, passed away three years after their marriage.  She married Felipe Herrera in 1913 and 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.

As Tonita’s children got older, they assumed the responsibility of taking care of each other, allowing Tonita more time to pursue painting and to eventually teach painting classes at the Santa Fe Indian School and the Albuquerque Indian School. 

Ina Sizer Cassidy commented on Tonita in an article in New Mexico Magazine in 1933:  “I have watched Tonita Peña of Cochiti, for instance, with watercolors and virgin paper, absorbed in materializing her concepts of the ceremonial dances and I have watched her plastering the walls of her adobe home, small palms outspread smoothing the velvety brown mud over the surface with care and creative concentration.  I have also watched her in the ceremonial dances in the plaza, her consecrated hands waving evergreen wands, rhythmically keeping time to the measured beat of the drum, and tread of her bare feet on the hot earth, and there is in all of these activities the same creative aesthetic quality which has made her one of the outstanding Indian painters of New Mexico, and I believe the only Indian woman to attain distinction in this newly revived expression.”

Tonita had a busy life teaching classes, raising children, taking care of the house and husband but found time to produce a large number of paintings.  This painting of a female Buffalo Dancer is signed in lower right Quah AH. Tonita peña.  The capital H in her name was a change she incorporated in her signature while she was married to her second husband, Felipe Herrera, a marriage which lasted from 1913 to 1920.

This painting of a female dancer incorporates well the details applied to her figures.  The feathers and evergreen boughs in her hands, the numerous necklaces she wears, the embroidery on her skirt and the enhancements of her boots are of the finest detail one could apply.  Tonita was a patient painter who never rushed her work.  This is an exceptional illustration of her paintings.

Condition: original condition

Provenance: from a gentleman collector from Oklahoma

Recommended Reading: Tonita Peña by Samuel Gray