EDWIN WILLARD DEMING (1860-1942) Untitled plains indian woman watering horses at dusk, oil on panel 8”x10”. inscribed “to my dear friend McClintock, Deming,” lower right.

“McClintock,” - Walter McClintock, died 1949, was a noted ethnologist, writer and western explorer who spent years living with the Montana Blackfeet beginning in 1896, was adopted into the tribe, became fluent in their language and religion, and became perhaps the leading non-Indian expert on the life, culture and spiritual practices of the tribe. His authoritative book, “The Old North Trail, Life, Legends and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians, “ was published in 1910

EDWIN WILLARD DEMING (1860-1942), Important and well-known painter of Indian and animal subjects in the west beginning in 1887, sculptor, muralist, illustrator, writer. Deming grew up with Indian playmates in western Illinois. He studied at the Art Student’s League, New York, until 1884, then in Paris for year at the Academie Juilien. First western trip was in 1887, when he visited the Apaches and Pueblo Indians in the southwest and the Umatillas in Oregon. He exhibited his first Indian paintings in 1891. Deming’s murals of Indian life are in the American Museum of Natural History, New York and the Musuem of the American Indian. His paintings, Mourning Brave and Buffalo Hunt are in the National Museum, Washington D.C. and his bronzes, The Fight and Mutual Surprise are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Deming works are also held in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX., the Brooklyn Museum, the Explorers Club, National Arts Club, the John Herron Institute, Indiana, the Milwaukee Art Institute and many others.

Grew up in Chicago,  studied with Freer and Vanderpoel at the School of the Chicago Art Institute,.from which she graduated with honors in 1900; in the same year began a long association  with Illinois Woman's College (now MacMurray College), Jacksonville, Il. where, despite the handicap of being deaf, she was a teacher of art and for many years department head. Studied with J.F. Carlson,  and for eight years with Charles Woodbury, 1910-1918, at Ogunquit, Maine.  Knopf  began her western trips in 1921, going first to Colorado, where she did much painting around Colorado Springs.  From 1923 to 1924 and 1941-42 she utilized two sabaticals from MacMurray for travel, including study with Birger Sandzen at the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs, and painting in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona,  Texas and California and the Grand Canyon of Arizona  She later returned to the west and painted in Montana, then Mexico and eastern Canada.  Knopf was 80 years old when she announced that she had done "miles of paintings, some of them very good."  Knopf received an honorary doctorate of fine arts degree from MacMurray in 1935.  Stylistically, and although she has, in some circles, erroneously been called an impressionist, perhaps because of her penchant for plein air painting,  Knopf's work was decidedly regionalist/modernist in character,  and characterized by exaggerated line, muscular composition, and bold, expressive colorism.  

Exhibited: Penna Academy of Fine Arts, 1910-1918, 1925-29; solo exhib.
Indianapolis Art Assoc.., 1927, Art Inst. Of Chicago, 1920-1922, 1925-27, 1929-30, 1937, Corcoran Gallery Biennials, 1921-35, Washington, D.C., National Acad. Of Design, NY,  1926,St. Louis Art Mus., Albright  Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, Omaha Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, , Toledo Museum, John Heron Art Inst., Indianapolis,  Broadmoor Art Academy, Colo Springs, CO., Detroit Institute of Art;  New York Watercolor Club, American Watercolor Society, New York, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, Il.  Works held: Colby College, Waterville, ME, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, Il, John H. Vanderpoel Art Association, Chicago, Lafayette, Indiana Art Association, Loo Historic Colorado Collection, Colorado Springs, CO. SOLD

With gratitude to Liz Kay for her writing and scholarship, *”Laura Gilpin Masterworks,” Andrew Smith Gallery, Santa Fe, ‘07

HELEN GREENE BLUMENSCHEIN (1909-1989), , India ink, gouache and watercolor on paper: inscription on verso of old backing reads “Arr-------- Peak, Helen Greene Blumenschein, 1969, gift to Erlinda and David Maes, Ranchos de Taos, from Helen Greene Blumenschein.”

The daughter of famed Taos founder Ernest Blumenschein, in 1919 at the age of ten she was brought by her parents from New York to Taos, New Mexico. Interested in art from childhood, she graduated from Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, and then went to Europe with her  mother in 1929.  There  for more than two years, she devoted herself to her studies.  After resettling in Taos she studied lithography and silk screening part of each year from 1932 to 1934 at the Art Students League.

Blumenschein made sketching trips to Arizona, the Grand Tetons and other  western locations, but she focused mostly on New Mexico themes.  Working in oil, watercolor, lithography and silk screen, she participated in group exhibitions in Europe and the U.S. from the 1930’s, including the National Academy, Carnegie Inst., Paris Salon, Museum of New Mexico, Denver Art Museum and the New York Worlds Fair.  She had a two person exhibition with her father at the Stables Gallery,Taos in 1959, and a three person show with her parents at the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, in 1979.

Bleumenschein was also a key member of the Taos Historical Society, a board Member of the New Mexico Archaeology Society, and an author of articles and books on the regions’ history and archaeology.

Public collections:  Carnegie Institute, Harwood Foundation, Library of Congress, Museum of New Mexico, New York Public Library and others.

Thanks to the Kovinicks and their wonderful reference on the leading female painters of the west for the bulk of this biographical information. SOLD