Original Painting of Indians at Taos Pueblo by Albert Lujan - Weasel Arrow [SOLD]

Albert Lujan is best known for creating charming, well-crafted painting scenes of his home and life at Taos Pueblo in New Mexico.  This piece, while small is size, is one of the strongest we’ve seen, and it serves as an excellent example of Lujan’s considerable talent.  Here, as is to be expected, the viewer sees Taos Pueblo. What’s unusual and exciting is the perspective: most of Lujan’s works picture the Pueblo from a distance, but this one gives the viewer an insider’s view.  In the foreground are the ends of two buildings. Between these two buildings is the intersection of two dirt roads. One veers off to the left, the other off to the right, continuing towards the multi-storied buildings which usually stand in the center of Lujan’s works.  In the center, a softly rolling hill is home to two hornos and another adobe building. In the background, the steep blue hills rise into a clear desert sky.

Lujan further elevated this piece with the addition of human figures.  At the roads’ intersection, two people meet. They appear to be walking towards the Pueblo’s multi-storied section.  Three other people are scattered around the area behind the pair in the foreground. Each person is composed in a very simple fashion—a colored top half, a different-colored bottom half, and white moccasins—that is entirely unlike the human figures featured in the works of other early Pueblo painters.  Lujan’s style was influenced more by European artists than his early Pueblo predecessors and contemporaries, and his pieces have a unique, lasting appeal. His colors here are strong; they’re at once warm and earthy, and sparingly applied greens and blues round out the image nicely. Lujan was a prolific painter, creating many small pieces and selling them to tourists.  This piece, with its atypical viewpoint and welcome addition of people, is especially appealing.

The painting is signed “Albert Lujan” in lower right, and framed in a beautiful wood frame.

Albert Lujan (1892-1948) Weasel Arrow was an early Taos Pueblo painter.  Lujan was ahead of his time in painting European-American style art rather than the Santa Fe Indian School style being practiced by most of the other Native American artists of his time. He, along with Albert Looking Elk Martinez and Juan Mirabal, was greatly influenced by the Anglo Taos artists of the time.  The work of all three artists was shunned by collectors and the Museum of New Mexico Fine Art Gallery because it was too much like that which the Taos and Santa Fe artists produced. Today, however, collectors and museums have a great appreciation for works by the “Three Taos Pueblo Painters.”

Lujan, who was also a farmer and minister, never received any formal artistic training.  He began painting around 1915, which would place him among the earliest known pueblo painters.  He specialized in painting the multi-storied buildings at the pueblo, usually devoid of people. Typically, these views included one of the main pueblo houses or an isolated adobe residence, each framed by beehive ovens, majestic mountains, a beautiful blue sky, and, occasionally, a ristra of chili.

Condition: very good condition with a small area in the lower right corner where the fabric is torn, revealing the board onto which it is wrapped.

Provenance: this Original Painting of Indians at Taos Pueblo by Albert Lujan - Weasel Arrow is from a private Colorado collection

Recommended Reading:  For a compelling and comprehensive overview of the life and artwork of Albert Lujan please see Albert Lujan: Entrepreneurial Pueblo Painter of Tourist Art (1892 - 1948) by Bradley F. Taylor, American Indian Art Magazine, Volume 25, Number 4, Autumn 2000, page 56.

Relative Links: painting, Taos Pueblo, Santa Fe, Albert Lujan, Albert Looking Elk Martinez, Juan Mirabal