This day is dedicated to art dealers, as you will see below.
We slept in and left the room at 9:00 and drove to the Taos Plaza to see if the Farmers’ Market was happening and it was. The only change was that everyone wore masks and entered at the west end of the Plaza and walked in one direction around to the east. We bought ¼ lb. of Shishito peppers and 2 ½ lb. of heirloom tomatoes.
The last stand was two guys selling burritos and tamales. I bought a Pork and red chili tamale and Suzette bought a Pulled Pork burrito.
We walked across the street to a restaurant located in the walkway between Bent street and the Plaza and sat at a table and Suzette went and bought a coffee for her and a chai for me. We ate our breakfast among the folks coming and going to the Plaza and the public parking lot.
After we ate at 10:00 we walked to Robert Parsons’ Gallery on Bent Street and waited for Aaron to
arrive. He was delayed because he was tending to his girlfriend, who had a stomach flu apparently.
When he arrived and we told him Suzette was interested in female artists, he showed us through the
storage areas. We found a nice framed Agnes Tait in the bathroom. Then we went to the outdoor storage looking for Helen Blumenscheins. In the garage that had been converted to storage we found many. We carried five to look at more closely back into the gallery.
Now the back story behind this treasure trove of Helen Blumenscheins.
Helen was the daughter of Ernest Blumenschein, one of the founders of the Taos Society of Artists and grew up in the Blumenschein House that is now a museum on Ledoux street. She was classically trained as an artist in Paris like her father and had a prolific career as an artist. Apparently when Helen died her heir first offered paintings to the New Mexico Fine Arts Museum in Santa Fe, which took a few of the best. Then the collection was offered to the Blumenschein House Museum and they took several more. The balance of her works were then offered to Robert Parsons, who bought everything that was left in 1998.
Robert is the leading gallery owner in Taos for Taos Society of Artists works and traditional paintings of New Mexico, so it was natural for him to buy the works of one of the founder’s daughter’s works who, painted in that tradition.
Some of Helen’s paintings that were recognizably New Mexico scenes were framed and sold but most have sat in Robert’s garage since 1998 until today when we looked through them.
We took five out of storage and to make a long story shorter, she bought the Tait and three of the five
for her New Mexico women artists show and collection.
Here are the pictures.
Probably near Abiquiu
Agnes Tait painting
Pond at Nambe Pueblo
style during the WPA and the East coast abstract expressionist movement. Most of 203 Fine Arts works are abstract. For example, Dorothy Brett painted both traditional realistic images, which are found in Robert’s Gallery and abstract images, which are found in Eric’s gallery.
Bea and Louie came to New Mexico in 1944 and were among the wave of modern artists who moved to Taos after WWII or graduated from progressive art schools like Black Mountain.
So Taos has fostered two great art movements. The first was the Taos Society of Artists that started officially in 1915 but unofficially in 1898.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taos_Society_of_Artists
The second major movement was the Taos Moderns started during and after WWII. Eric is the leading Taos art dealer of Taos Moderns’ works in Taos and was Ribak and Mandelman’s dealer for years at Tally Richards Gallery and later his own 203 Gallery, so it is natural that he handles the works left in their estate after the Harwood Museum selected the ones they wanted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taos_art_colony
Eric showed us lots of works by Bea and we both liked a colorful collage constructed of colored tissue paper and black ink. I decided to buy it so Suzette could show it in her upcoming show of
female artists of New Mexico and to have a work by an important New Mexico abstract artist.
We loaded the Mandelman into the car at around 1:45 and headed south toward the Taos gorge to find a place to eat lunch by the Rio Grande. We turned off the main highway at Rincon and drove up river toward the John Dunn Bridge until we came to a camp ground in the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. We found an unoccupied camp site and ate our picnic lunch at the table. Lunch included
Chicken Salad, brie cheese, slices of one of the heirloom tomatoes, and pita chips plus a Tecate beer for me and a glass of Gruner Vitlander wine for Suzette and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.
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| clouds near Alcalde |
We arrived at 4:21 and Peter arrived at 4:30 with the painting already wrapped in bubble wrap. We paid him and talked for a few minutes and then drove home with the four Helen Blumenscheins, the Agnes Tait and the Bea Mandelman.
I don’t really want to get into a big discussion about how two people with approximately equal knowledge assess the value of a piece of canvas or paper with a few cents of paint on it, but suffice it to be said that everyone involved in the three transactions was happy about the outcome. The dealers who saw the value and preserved the art works for posterity and Suzette and I, who are collecting in this new area of art.
In fact when we were talking to Peter after we loaded his Helen painting he mentioned visiting the Mabel Dodge Lujan and Company exhibit twice and how impressed he was by it. The bond that unites all of those we dealt with this weekend is that we all love art.
When we arrived home I took a shower and changed into my pajamas. We were happy to be home.
After examining the pictures and discussing their cleaning and framing we decided we were not hungry but wanted to make lemonade with the lemons left after I removed the outer layer of peel for lemincello last week. So I squeezed the dozen lemons and Suzette made a simple syrup and then blended a 1 to 1 mixture of simple syrup and fresh lemon juice for a delicious lemonade.
At 7:45 I decided to eat the PPI lasagna and fried spinach from Friday night’s meal and made a braunschweiger sandwich on toasted French Baguette.
Suzette’s comment was, “That is a pretty weird combination.”
I could not disagree, but I loved dinner with the last glass of Murphy Goode Pinot Noir.
We watched repeats of Father Brown and Death in Paradise and went to bed at 10:00.
I awakened at 2:30 to blog.
Bon Appetitj
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