EDWIN WILLARD DEMING (1860-1942) “Children of the Lodges,” watercolor and gouache on board 14 3/4 by 23 in., signed lower right E.W. Deming and insignia, ca. 1900, in its original late victorian style gilt filigreed picture frame.

A multi-faceted artist best known for his depictions of Native Americans and wildlife, Edwin Willard Deming was born in Ashland, Ohio, in 1860. He received his training at the Art Students League and spent a year in Paris where he studied with Boulanger and Lefebvre. Deming had a long-standing relationship with Native Americans. As a child he played with Sac, Fox, and Winnebago Indian children in western Illinois. During Deming’s first trip to the American West in 1887, he visited the Apache and Pueblo Indians in the Southwest, and the Umatillas in Oregon. In 1893, Deming and fellow artist DeCost Smith spent time among the Sioux and Crow Indians to write and illustrate about life among these people for Outing magazine.

On one of his infrequent trips to New York City, Deming married Therese Osterheld, who was also an artist. They raised their six children out West where the Blackfeet Indians adopted the family and gave Deming the name Eight Bears. Later, the family moved back to New York City where their home in Greenwich Village was called “The Lodge of the Eight Bears.” Deming collaborated with his wife to write and illustrate a series of children’s books, as well as illustrating a children’s book written by his daughter Alden. He died in New York City in 1942.

Deming’s paintings and sculpture are held in the permanent collections of over twenty major American museums.

Edwin Willard Deming (1860-1942) Untitled mounted Plains Indian warrior with lance, probably Teton Sioux, oil on canvas 28”x22,” signed lower left E. W. Deming, late 19th century. Deming’s first trip west was in 1887, when he visited the Apache and Pueblo Indians in the southwest, as well as the Umatillas in Oregon. In 1893 Deming and fellow artist DeCost Smith spent time among the Sioux and Crow Indians to write and illustrate about life among these people for Outing Magazine. Based on quillwork decoration on the leggins and moccasins, that trip was the likely genesis of this picture.

EDWIN WILLARD DEMING (1860-1942), Untitled northern plains lodge interior, probably Blackfeet, with seated figures and ceremonial buffalo skull in firelight, oil on board 16”x22”, signed E.W Deming lower right.

The romanticized painted pictographic hide tipi liner reinforces the solemnity and spirituality of the scene. The war-shirted male figure kneels on a painted buffalo robe with his decorated shield behind, painted parfleche cases ringing the perimeter of the tipi. Undoubtedly painted from Deming’s first hand experiences living with the Piegans. Deming, his wife Therese and six children camped and lived with the Blackfeet Indians in Glacier National Park in 1913-1914. Upon their arrival at Browning, the Demings witnessed the annual sun dance. The Demngs were at once adopted by the Blackfeet and Indian names were bestowed upon all. Mr. Deming was named Running Wolf and Mrs. Deming Strikes on Top. Deming took photographs of the ceremonies in the Sun Lodge as the medicine men were making prayers to the sun. Deming painted about twenty pictures of the mountains and scenes in Glacier Park. Moving pictures of ceremonial rites were also made by the artist during this trip, of which the present picture is a prime example. The decorated ceremonial buffalo skull indicates a likely sun dance related ceremonal. The Demings also lived for a time in a very large painted tipi at St. Mary’s Lake. SOLD

FRANK PAUL SAUERWEIN (1871-1910), Untitled, Mounted Ute Indian with Navajo blanket and eagle bonnet fording a stream at sunset, watercolor on paper 6 1/2” x 9 1/2”, signed ‘F.P. Sauerwein, 1900” lower right.

During a short lifetime of thirty nine years, Frank Sauerwein became a specIalist of western scene painting including southwest Indians in their landscape, Had he not died of tuberculosis in 1910 he likely could have become the seventh founding member of the Taos Society of Artists.
The son of painter Charles D. Sauerwein, he was raised in Philadelphia,studied at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, subsequently moving to Denver in 1891, where he was active until the after turn of the century. In 1893 he accompanied the well-known Colorado artist Charles Craig on a painting trip to the Ute Reservation in southwestern Colorado, and spent the rest of the decade roaming and painting throughout New Mexico and Arizona. particularly the Grand Canyon, Keams Canyon and the Ganado Trading Post onthe Navajo Reservation while maintaining an intermittent residence in Taos.
In 1901 Sauerwein taught at a private girls school in Denver, moving to Pasadena briefly before returning to Taos in 1902. In 1906 he purchased an eight room adobe in Taos and today parts of the Taos Inn are located on Sauerwein’s property. Too ill to continue painting, Sauerwein moved to Stamford CT, where he died June 13,1910.
Collections: Phoenix Art Museum, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Eiteljiorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Museum of New Mexico, Sangre De Cristo Arts Center, Stark Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, The Denver Art Museum.

Ila Mae McAfee (1897-1995), Untitled New Mexico Landscape with Adobe, oil on panel 9”x12”, signed lower right, ca. 1935.

Ila Mae McAfee grew up on a ranch south of Gunnison in the tiny hamlet of Sargents. She spent most of her elementary education at a country school, traveling the ten mile round trip each day on horseback. She graduated from Gunnison High School in 1916, then spent a year in Los Angeles at the West Lake School of Art and the Haz Art School. Returning to Colorado, she studied art with Catherine and Henry Richter at Western State College, and earned her B. A. Degree from Western State in 1919. McAfee moved to Chicago in 1920, becoming a student of muralist James E. Mcburney and serving as his assistant until 1924. During her Chicago residence she also came under the influence of the noted sculptor, Loredo Taft.
In 1925 and 1926 mcAfee studied in New York City at two of the most prestigious venues of American Art Education of the time - Art Student’s League, and the National Academy of Design. While in New York , McAfee also did illustrations for Blue Book and Ranch romances, and other magazines, and painted miniatures of animals. McAfee married fellow artist Elmer Page Turner in Chicago in 1926, and two years later they moved to Taos. McAfee, who had sketched since the age of three, quickly became identified in Taos for her renderings of horses and other animals, native americans, and ranch scenes. From 1935 on, by which time most of the original Taos founders had gone to the happy hunting ground, Ila was in the forefront of significant representational artists working in New Mexico, and the equal of many of her contemporaries in Santa Fe, the Cinco Pintores, and the Santa Fe Art Colony.
Over the years, McAfee produced such works as Taos Pueblo on a Summer Afternoon, acquired by the the Santa Fe Railroad Company, Chicago in 1930, Longhorns on the Range, purchased by the New Mexico Sate Fair Committe, Albuquerque, in 1962, and Wind in the Night, acquired by Western State Collge in 1972. The Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, Ok purchased 13 of her paintings. McAfee was also noted for her murals, and completed a number of commissions for post offices under the WPA program in Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado, among them Pre Settlement days,depicting buffalo and antelope on the Plains, and Wealth of the West, and Texas Longhorns.
McAfee had one person exhibitions at the Botts Memorial Gallery, Albuquerque (1959), Fine Arts Gallery, Santa Fe (1974), Stables Gallery, Taos (1975, 1978,1981, the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center, Pueblo, Co, l990. Group exhibitions included those of the Denver Art Museum, Museum of New mexico, the Governors’ Gallery, State Capitol, Santa Fe, the Springville Museum of Art, Utah, Corcoran Gallery, Washington,D. C., and the Gilcrease Institute, Tulsa.
Works held: Sangre de Cristo Arts Center, Pueblo, Co, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, Gilcrease Institute, Tulsa, Ok, Panhandlel Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Tx, the Stark Museum of Art, Orange, TX and many important private collections.