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Lot Essay
In The Cache, Native Americans descend a rocky cliff, preparing their horses to follow. As one begins to inch down, Terpning captures the moment just before the journey down, as the sun-dappled cliffs glow against the sunlight. Impressive in scale, The Cache embodies Terpning’s legacy as a master storyteller of Native Americans and the American West.
Terpning writes of the present work, "The land, always the land, was bountiful deity. You could even hide something in it, as have these Apaches. It's difficult for us moderns to conceive of the attitudes of the first Americans toward the land. They dwelt in, on, and above the land and were upon it always. It was a living divinity. One has to study and study a piece of ground to know it was that way. Maybe I came close to that understanding with the eroded bank of an Arizona arroya. Many times I rode horseback along this dry wash, and this pocked, rocky, slope of mud began to communicate with me. Little by little the idea came to mind, and I made a great many photographic studies of patterns of early and late light and shadow. And in time I visualized these two Apaches on the run, hiding their plunder in this embankment." (as quoted in D. Dedera, Howard Terpning: The Storyteller, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1989, p. 19)
Terpning writes of the present work, "The land, always the land, was bountiful deity. You could even hide something in it, as have these Apaches. It's difficult for us moderns to conceive of the attitudes of the first Americans toward the land. They dwelt in, on, and above the land and were upon it always. It was a living divinity. One has to study and study a piece of ground to know it was that way. Maybe I came close to that understanding with the eroded bank of an Arizona arroya. Many times I rode horseback along this dry wash, and this pocked, rocky, slope of mud began to communicate with me. Little by little the idea came to mind, and I made a great many photographic studies of patterns of early and late light and shadow. And in time I visualized these two Apaches on the run, hiding their plunder in this embankment." (as quoted in D. Dedera, Howard Terpning: The Storyteller, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1989, p. 19)