Taos Pueblo Village Scene by Albert Lujan [SOLD]

Taos Pueblo artist Albert Lujan’s Tewa name is translated as “Weasel Arrow.” He places an arrow hallmark alongside his name on his canvasses.

Lujan discovered his affinity for art while overseeing the repainting of the Taos Pueblo church about 1915. He borrowed some paints and began sketching a landscape on a piece of cardboard. A passing tourist insisted on buying his first effort and bought him a set of oil paints and supplies. Soon he mastered the techniques and began painting vignettes of Taos Pueblo, which the tourists found charming and irresistible.

Weasel Arrow effectively marketed and promoted his own art by building a curio shop in the front of his house at the pueblo and selling directly to tourists. It was Lujan who talked the pueblo council into charging an admission fee to tourists. At first, they were skeptical, but gave him a week to try his hand at it. He returned to the council with a bag full of money. This was in the mid-1930s and Taos Pueblo has charged admission since that time.

This oil painting is floated in a gold-leaf frame hand made by Tres Mowka Designs of Santa Fe, one of the city's finest art framers.  The iconic scene is of his native Taos Pueblo - one of the last remaining multi-storied pueblo buildings still left in existence.

Provenance: From the collection of Alexander E. Anthony, Jr. since 1998.

Condition: this Taos Pueblo Village Scene by Albert Lujan is in very good condition

Recommended Reading: Albert Lujan: Entrepreneurial Pueblo Painter of Tourist Art (1892-1948) by Bradley F. Taylor, in American Indian Art Magazine, Autumn 2000, pp. 56-65.