Ernest L. Blumenschein: The Life of an American Artist by Robert W. Larson, Carole B. Larson (review)

Ernest L. Blumenschein is the biography of a major figure in the history of the art colony at Taos, New Mexico. Blumenschein (1874–1960) was educated in the finest traditions of Europe. His orchestra-conductor father wanted him to study music, but “Blumey,” as he was called by his friends, preferred art school. He moved to New York City in 1892 to study at the Art Students League, then to the Academie Julian in Paris in 1894. During his studies, a fellow student told him about a trip to New Mexico. Fascinated by the account of Pueblo Indians and wilderness landscapes, Blumey thought it seemed an ideal place for American painters to exploit uniquely American subject matter. He worked hard in Paris, learning techniques of the Old Masters, and returned to New York two years later to work as an illustrator. One assignment, in 1898, took him and a friend to the Southwest. On this trip, an accident forced Blumey to make a twenty-mile walk to Taos through scenes that would soon form the chief inspiration for his life’s work. Although he returned to Paris twice more to upgrade his painting skills and made large sums of money doing illustration work in New York City, Blumey never forgot Taos. For years he produced commercial art to save money to summer in Taos doing fine art. While a part-time resident, he helped found the Taos Society of Artists in 1915. Blumey brought all his training to bear on paintings of American Indians, Hispanics, and colorful landscapes. In 1919, an inheritance allowed him to relocate permanently. From then on he was a central figure, professionally active until his death in 1960 at the age of eighty-six.

The book results from a unique collaboration. Carole Lang, at the age of fourteen, met Blumenschein during a family vacation. Later, she married Dr. Robert Larson, a professor of western and American Indian history at the University of Northern Colorado. Carole’s interest in art carried the couple to Taos and Santa Fe on visits, but in 1977, they divorced. In 1998, she died and some of her effects came to Robert, including nine chapters of a biography she was writing on Blumenschein. Meanwhile, the University of Oklahoma Press was seeking new entries for its series on western biographies. Larson approached the press to gauge its interest and sat down to complete his ex-wife’s manuscript. Larson wrote chapters ten through sixteen and turned eighty-six the year it was published, thirty-six years after his divorce from Carole and fifteen years after her death. It is dedicated to her memory, so it is both a biography and a tribute.

Larson adapted so well to his ex-wife’s writing style that the transition between their work is unnoticeable. There is plenty to admire in this book. It tells about a virile, serious, hard-working, business-like, competitive, opinionated, straight-arrow fellow whose ambition was to create distinctively American art using the techniques of European academies. Along the way, much is learned about diverse topics, such as Parisian art schools, the illustration profession during the Gilded Age, the artist colony movement in France and America, the campaign to obliterate American Indian culture, the impact of 100-percent Americanism during World War I, and the discouraging effects of abstract modernism on academic artists after World War II. Although the book benefits from abundant sources, one drawback is that there is no compiled list of his major works or their location. For that, a reader should consult In Contemporary Rhythm: The Art of Ernest L. Blumenschein (2008). Blumenschein’s connection to Texas is almost nil other than being a proponent of Southwest regionalism; however, he greatly influenced the curator of the Panhandle-Plains Museum in Canyon, which has some of his paintings. Blumenschein’s works...