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

Special Value Offer: The consignor of this painting has authorized a price reduction of 20% from the original price of $1400 to a new price of $1100.

Tonita Peña was born at San Ildefonso Pueblo, but was sent by her father, following the death of her mother, to live with an aunt at Cochiti Pueblo at the age of 12. She spent the remainder of her life there.  She was and is still considered an artist from San Ildefonso Pueblo.  She was the only female in the group of talented early pueblo artists referred to as The San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, which included such noted artists as Julian Martinez, Alfonso Roybal, Abel Sanchez, Crecencio Martinez, and Encarnacion Peña. The men accepted her as an equal.

By the time Peña was 25 years old, she was a successful easel artist, and her work was being shown in museum exhibitions and in commercial art galleries in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. She painted what she knew best—scenes of life at the pueblo—mostly ceremonial dances and everyday events. She is still considered one of the best female Indian artists of all time and is recognized as the very first female Pueblo artist to pursue art as a career.  She was a mentor to Pablita Velarde and is credited with convincing Pablita to pursue art as a career.

During her lifetime she used a variety of signatures on her paintings.  It is through these signature changes that it is possible to date her paintings with reasonable accuracy.  This painting is signed Quah Ah Tonita peña.  This is a signature she used in 1921 and 1922.

Tonita was fond of color and used it profusely.  She nevertheless painted her figures accurately to the last detail and painted on a variety of materials—paper, wood, Masonite, and canvas, using oils, watercolor, casein, pen and colored ink.  This painting of a male Buffalo Dancer appears to be casein on paper but has not been examined out of the frame.

Condition: original condition

Provenance: from a gentleman collector from Oklahoma

Recommended Reading:  Tonita Peña by Samuel Gray