San Ildefonso Pueblo Male Dancer with Feather Headdress [SOLD]

The San Ildefonso Pueblo students were the first painters 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 (Luis) 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.

Luis Gonzales 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 of artists from San Ildefonso.  There were few painted during his career and fewer on the market today.

The northern pueblos were influenced by Plains Indian culture and often painted images of dancers wearing Plains Indian style feathered head dressings.  This painting is a good example of such an event.  The male appears to be dancing, his left leg up, and his arms in motion.  It is quite likely that he is a San Ildefonso dancer performing a dance relating to the Plains culture.  San Ildefonso and other northern New Mexico pueblos perform a Comanche Dance on a regular basis.

The painting is signed Wo Peen in lower right - take a look at the attention-to-detail of this signature, including the "arrow" portion of the letter P and the outlining of the all the other letters.  It is not dated on the front but there was a date of 1907 on the cardboard backing.  It is framed in a period wood frame.

Condition: The mat has been changed to an acid-free one and the cardboard backing has been removed and replaced with neutral foam core.  The artist board on which the painting appears was originally more blue in color and now has slightly faded to green

Recommended Reading: Modern by Tradition: American Indian Painting in the Studio Style by Bruce Bernstein, et al.  This out-of-print book is currently not available from Adobe Gallery

Provenance: from the extensive painting collection of a family from Santa Fe