The loose, bold brushstrokes of The Mine have the vigor and vitality of a painting made outdoors (a “plein air” painting). While the location in the picture has not been identified, it is both possible and probable that it depicts the Gallup, NM, area. Herbert Tschudy visited Gallup frequently on the annual trips he made to New Mexico during the first three decades of the 1900s. Handwritten notes on the back of the painting detailing its exhibition history indicate it was made in Gallup. A noticeable and plentiful feature of the Gallup landscape are twisted juniper trees, one of which appears prominently in the foreground of The Mine. Despite the title, the sparsely painted smoke stacks in the painting’s background appear incidental to its primary subject: the dramatic natural features and dynamic sunset colors of the high desert landscape. Because the artist has no known involvement in the New Deal, it is likely that he donated this piece to the Gallup Art Center based on his relationship to the community.
Artist Demographic: Male
Historic McKinley County Courthouse
This building was constructed through the Public Works Administration (PWA). The cornerstone was laid in 1938 and the building opened one year later. The PWA funding formula matched local investment 45 percent to 55 percent. McKinley County raised $125,000 through a general obligation bond—passed by voters 427 to 77 on August 9, 1938—and the PWA made a grant of $102,272.
The building was designed by Trost & Trost, an architecture and engineering firm based in El Paso, TX, to house county offices, including the County Commission chambers and County Treasurer, Clerk, and Assessor offices on the first floor, a courtroom on the second floor, and a jail on the third floor. Trost & Trost designed and built hundreds of buildings across the Southwest in the first half of the 1900s. In addition to the courthouse, the firm is responsible for three other Gallup buildings built in the 1920s/1930s, none of which still stand.
In its design for the McKinley County Courthouse, Trost & Trost fully embraced the mythology of “triculturalism,” which has pervaded New Mexico for generations. Triculturalism promotes the exceptionally simplistic view that the state is home to a harmonious melting pot of three main cultures, “Native American,” “Hispanic,” and “Anglo.” Of course, this narrative never has been inclusive of all of the population’s ethnicities or the great variety of ways New Mexicans identify themselves. The historic courthouse conceptualizes triculturalism, as its north, east, and south facades are designed to represent Anglo, Hispanic, and Native American cultures, respectively.
The building’s north face houses its main entrance and includes classic western European features such as a portico and columns along with Art Deco–style elements such as the geometric carved decorations at either end of the portico. Its east side resembles a Spanish mission church, with a high-arched doorway and bell tower. Its southern exterior is an interpretation of an Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwelling with a T-shaped door and flat wall accented by an asymmetrical arrangement of small, square-shaped, unframed windows.
The interior of the courthouse is highly decorated with tilework, wallpaintings and tinwork light fixtures throughout the first-floor lobby, and large mural titled Zuni Pottery Makers on the wall of a first-floor office. A 2,000-square-foot mural covers the walls of the second-floor courtroom, and the building was originally furnished handcrafted pine tables, chairs, benches and cabinets (now in storage).
Shalako
Shalako, which depicts an annual A:shiwi (Zuni) winter festival, is an action-packed, tremendously detailed painting. In it, Jose Rey Toledo captures everything from the central dancers’ movements and regalia to the backdrop with supreme precision. Notice the fine lines delineating each individual bead on the dancers’ necklaces, how headdress feathers have been colored one by one, and how the artist renders the fringe of the woven sashes worn by the two dancers on the left with pinpoint-size brushstrokes. Behind them, more than two dozen onlookers are individually represented, each with distinct facial features, clothing, and postures. Toledo’s meticulousness even extends to the background, where each element is finely articulated, including the perched owl’s feathers.
The Half-Breed
The Half-Breed is a problematic painting, not least because of its title, a derogatory term for a biracial Native American person. The circumstances of its creation are a mystery. Who it pictures and why it was made are not known. The artist likely donated it, along with Chief Deer (Sioux Indian), to the Gallup Art Center. The two paintings are almost identical in size, and the possibility that they are a set raises the question of what Albert Delmont Smith meant to convey by the comparison. The Half-Breed has not been displayed by Gallup’s public library for some time, and suffered damage long ago due to improper storage.
Chief Deer (Sioux Indian)
This painting by Albert Delmont Smith, a New York City-based society portraitist, is an enigma. The sitter has not been identified and it is not known for whom or for what reason it was made. It is likely the painting was donated by the artist to the Gallup Art Center, along with The Half-Breed (which may or may not be a companion portrait).
Quenching Their Thirst
Eliseo Rodriguez1 is best known for reviving the 18th/19th-century Spanish Colonial art of straw appliqué as a New Deal artist, but he was also a highly accomplished painter, though few of the paintings he made for the Federal Art Project are credited to him. Despite the lack of credit often afforded artists of color by New Deal art programs (and conventional Eurocentric art historical scholarship), Rodriguez was a multitalented modern artist who significantly contributed to the development of the Santa Fe art colony in the first half of the 20th century and beyond. In Quenching Their Thirst, Rodriguez employs confident, bold lines and a primary color palette to show a scene of everyday Hispano life in New Mexico and at the same time refer to the biblical parable of Jesus and the woman at the well. Author Carmella Padilla explains that “Rodriguez’s devout spirituality and personal religious experience infused his paintings with a special soulfulness.”2
Untitled (Grand Canyon)
Edgar Alwin Payne’s paintings are often designed not just to show the viewer the landscape, but to help them imagine themselves within it. In Untitled (Grand Canyon), Payne positions the viewer a short distance down a canyon wall trail. This perspective is more intimate than an aerial view or the panorama visible from the canyon’s rim. Immersed within the canyon, the viewer is dwarfed by its hugeness but can also appreciate the architectural features of the canyon walls.
Canyon de Muerto
Edgar Alwin Payne first visited and painted Canyon de Chelly—a cluster of several canyons, including Canyon del Muerto, in northeastern Arizona—in 1917.1 Commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad to record the journey from Albuquerque to California, Payne spent four months exploring the canyons, and the artwork he produced cemented his status as one of the period’s leading Western American artists. In Canyon de Muerto, Payne is largely concerned with capturing the scale of the canyon’s 1,000-foot-tall walls. The painting is composed so that the sandstone rock formations extend beyond the boundaries of the frame, taking up over two-thirds of the canvas and rationing the view of the sky. Two strategically positioned horseback riders provide the viewer a reference point for apprehending such dramatic proportions.
Nambe Valley, Summer
Sheldon Parsons’ career spanned the first half of the 20th century, when one avant-garde art movement after another rose to defy convention and challenge the foundations of Western American art. As an artist and curator, Parsons bridged the professional divide between “realism” and “modernism”—he both promoted traditional standards while being open to new approaches. His more “realistic” side is at play in Nambe Valley, Summer. The painting adheres to the major conventions of Western art: it is composed according to a clearly defined foreground, middle ground, and background; it takes a panoramic perspective on the landscape; its color palette is tightly controlled; and its brushwork delivers a high degree of finish.
Casa on the Hill
Sheldon Parsons, a leader within the growing Santa Fe artist colony at the beginning of the 20th century, took both sides in the era’s hotly contested artistic debate between “realism” and “modernism” in Western American art, promoting traditional standards without dismissing unconventional ideas. As his career matured, however, Parsons became increasingly experimental in his practice, and bold use of complementary colors became a trademark of the artist’s in his last decade (Parsons died in 1943). In Casa on the Hill, a mix of warm yellow and orange autumn hues stand out against a loosely brushed bright blue sky. Note how the purple shadows cast by towering trees in a latticework pattern on a green-glazed ground make the painting a dance of color.