SPECIAL OFFER: Full Portrait of an Indian in Native Dress [SOLD]

Special Value Offer: The owner of this excellent early work of Velarde's has authorized a 30% price reduction from $3,500 to $2,500.

Possibly because Pablita lost her sight for the first half dozen years of her life, when she regained it at around age 6 or 7, she became keenly aware of her surroundings, and particularly the day-to-day activities of pueblo life. Ordinary activities of daily life struck her mind in photographic detail. She was keenly aware of activities in the houses, in the plaza, or in outlying fields as her neighbors and relatives worked. She watched her aunts making pottery, the women plastering the interior house walls, and the designs painted on the kiva walls. Few people perceive with heightened sensitivity, as did she.

Pablita was not interested in making pottery. She was much more interested in painting the scenes she was witnessing.

It may seem strange that a Pueblo artist would paint a portrait of someone who appears to be a Plains Indian, but there is a long tradition at San Ildefonso Pueblo of the men dressing in Plains clothing—feather head bonnet and leather leggings. San Ildefonso incorporates dancers dressed in such at its dances every year. There are numerous photographs of Julian Martinez dressed in Plains attire, and many paintings by Julian, and other Pueblo artists, of Indians dressed in this manner.

This is an exceptional painting. The consistency of paint throughout is remarkable as is the detail applied to the beaded breast and arm pieces. The facial features express the intensiveness of the drummer to his task. Pablita even applied shadowing to appropriate places on the body—an effort not often tried by Pueblo artists of this period.

The painting is in excellent condition. It is signed Pablita Velarde and dated 1954.