Original Painting of a Navajo and His Horse at a Waterhole [SOLD]

Quincy Tahoma (1917-1956) Water Edge had a rather turbulent early life.  He was forced to leave his home and attend government schools where he was forbidden to speak his native language, the only language he knew.  He was sent to the Santa Fe Indian School as a young man and mixed in with Pueblo and Plains Indian students with whom he was unfamiliar.

Although Dorothy Dunn, the art teacher at Santa Fe Indian School, did not overly teach painting styles to students, she did encourage them, and she let them know her desires that they paint items from their culture, not from other cultures. Pueblo students painted pueblo subjects and Navajo were to paint Navajo subjects.

Tahoma spent his early years on the reservation doing what young Navajo boys did—riding their horse looking for rabbits or something to shoot with their arrows.  Perhaps this was the inspiration for this painting of a young Navajo boy riding his horse on a hot summer day.  He is dressed in a loin cloth, moccasins and hat and carries a quiver and bow.  Rider and horse are taking a break but the young Navajo is eagerly searching the terrain for something of interest while his horse is taking a drink.  Maybe Tahoma was having a moment of reminiscing. 

The paining is signed Tahoma and dated ’48 in lower right along with his customary cartouche showing the next event, rider and horse riding off.  Tahoma almost always signed his name and a title of the paining on verso but this painting was delivered to us framed and the back of it is not visible so we do not know if he signed the back or not.

Condition: appears to be in original condition but has not been examined out of the frame.

Provenance: from the estate of a collector from New York

Recommended Reading:  Quincy Tahoma, the Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist by Charnell Havens