Tesuque Pueblo Mixed Animal Dance Painting [R]

Animal dances at New Mexico pueblos are performed in the fall and winter as a celebration of thanksgiving for bountiful game. Deer, antelope, rams and buffalo are often seen in the same dance. The hunter takes on the spirit of the animal he has hunted during the year. He thanks the spirit of that animal, and he asks for good luck for next year's hunt.  Animal Dances are popular subjects for artists to paint.

Tomás Vigil presents Buffalo, Deer and Antelope Dancers accompanied by a single female dancer.  He has painted the subject in the traditional pueblo style of no ground plane or landscape features.  His works are generally primitive in a folk-art style but with vivid colors.  His attention to detail was quite well known.

Vigil was one of the earliest 20^th-century pueblo painters, with most of his works produced between 1920 - 1950.  A self-taught artist, he captured the customs of Tesuque Pueblo with rigid accuracy and detail.  He set the standard for subsequent Tesuque painters, including his son, Paul Vigil.  His works are included in numerous collections, including the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico and the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe. 

Olive Rush, a famous Santa Fe painter, bought Indian paintings and drawings as early as 1914 from Tesuque Pueblo. Among her early paintings were several by Pan-Yo-Pin. An exhibit in 1927 in New York featured an unusually large number of painters from New Mexico pueblos. Pan-Yo-Pin was included in this exhibit. These paintings made a tremendous impression on the Eastern public and were praised in the Eastern press.

Pan-Yo-Pin was again represented in the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts in 1931 in New York. This was a major exposition conceived and executed by Santa Feans and supported with items lent by over 50 museums, colleges and private collectors. With artist John Sloan as its president, the exposition gave an important place to paintings among other selections of arts and crafts.

Condition: the painting was executed on paper which appears to have been rolled for storage, resulting in three vertical crease lines.  There is also a quarter-size water mark on the paper, below the far-right Buffalo dancer, which possibly is a drop of water from the painter’s brush.  See the large detail image for this.

Provenance: from the collection of a family from Albuquerque

Reference and Recommended Reading:  American Indian Painting of the Southwest and Plains Areas by Dorothy Dunn.