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Lot Essay
On his first trip to Taos in 1899, Oscar Berninghaus sketched the beautiful landscape from his seat on the train. Years later, after he had established himself as one of the leading painters of the Southwest, he wrote a letter describing the momentous trip: "As we stopped and passed Servilleta, a station now gone, the brakeman pointed out a certain mountain lying toward the East; this he called Taos Mountain and told me of a little Mexican village of the same name and the Indian Pueblo lying at the foot of it. That it was one of the oldest towns in the United States (he knew) and gave me some of its history, describing it so vividly that I started on a twenty-five mile wagon trek over what was comparatively a goat trail." (L.M. Bickerstaff, Pioneer Artists of Taos, Denver, Colorado, 1983, p. 86) The little town that Berninghaus visited for the first time that day became the spot to which he would faithfully return every single year until he moved there permanently in 1925.
Berninghaus's fine reputation rests both on his skill as an artist, and the accuracy with which he recorded the magnificent terrain and way of life in Taos. Mexican Settlement of Taos is one of the artist's outstanding descriptions of this remarkably beautiful and compelling area. In this painting, the artist faithfully depicted the place where he arrived on that fateful day in 1899 as described in his letter: "After a hard journey, I arrived in Taos late in the afternoon, the sun casting its glowing color over the hills that gave the Sangre de Christo mountains their name. I found it all as the brakeman had described it and more so, a barren plaza with hitching rail around it, covered wagons of home seekers, cow and Indian ponies hitched to it... Fascinated by the people, the Indians and Mexicans, the adobe architecture, the sagebrush, the mountains, they all inspired me as subject matter." (L.M. Bickerstaff, Pioneer Artists of Taos, p. 86-7)
Berninghaus's fine reputation rests both on his skill as an artist, and the accuracy with which he recorded the magnificent terrain and way of life in Taos. Mexican Settlement of Taos is one of the artist's outstanding descriptions of this remarkably beautiful and compelling area. In this painting, the artist faithfully depicted the place where he arrived on that fateful day in 1899 as described in his letter: "After a hard journey, I arrived in Taos late in the afternoon, the sun casting its glowing color over the hills that gave the Sangre de Christo mountains their name. I found it all as the brakeman had described it and more so, a barren plaza with hitching rail around it, covered wagons of home seekers, cow and Indian ponies hitched to it... Fascinated by the people, the Indians and Mexicans, the adobe architecture, the sagebrush, the mountains, they all inspired me as subject matter." (L.M. Bickerstaff, Pioneer Artists of Taos, p. 86-7)