Single Figure of a San Ildefonso Buffalo Hunter in Full Regalia [SOLD]

José Encarnacion Peña (1902-1979) Soqween - So Kwa A Weh (Frost on the Mountain) was among the many painters at San Ildefonso Pueblo working in the 1920s: namely, Tonita Peña, Richard Martínez, Luís Gonzales, Abel Sánchez, and Romando Vigil.

“A little-known San Ildefonso artist is Encarnación Peña. One of the early artists, he produced little through the years. Like so many others, he was greatly influenced by the more outstanding men of his village, particularly in delicacy of style in painting dancers.” (Dunn, 1957)

Peña is well represented in the collections of the Denver Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Museum of Northern Arizona, Millicent Rogers Museum (Taos), Southwest Museum (Los Angeles) and the Laboratory of Anthropology of the Museum of New Mexico.

Among his awards is “Best example of original use of traditional material” awarded by Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) in 1957. 

Some of the San Ildefonso artists, including Romando Vigil (Tse-Ye-Mu); Encarnacion Peña (Soqween); Julian Martinez (Pocano); and Richard Martinez (Opa-Mu-Nu) painted sporadically for the Santa Fe tourist market and for art collectors during the 1920s and 1930. Brody 1997 (see below reference)

This painting by Peña depicts a Single Figure of a San Ildefonso Buffalo Hunter in Full Regalia—a participant in the Buffalo Dance. His color usage is subdued and the details are very soft, as delicate as Dunn suggests.  The dancer wears a large white feather as head cover, an array of feathers from behind his head, a traditional kilt with an Avanyu design and tin cones from the edge of the kilt that flip up and down during the dance and provide a tingling sound imitating rain.  He carries evergreen and feathers in his hands as he dances.  The painting is signed in lower right.

Condition: appears to be in very good condition

Provenance: from the estate of a former client from New York

Recommended Reading: 

-        American Indian Painting of the Southwest and Plains Areas by Dorothy Dunn, 1957

-        Pueblo Indian Painting—Tradition and Modernism in New Mexico 1900-1930 by J. J. Brody, 1997