San Ildefonso Pueblo Male and Female Basket Dancers (Pair)[SOLD]

Tonita Vigil Peña (1893-1949) Quah Ah did not have an easy life.  She lost her mother and sister when she was 12 years old and then her dad sent her from San Ildefonso, her native pueblo, to live with an aunt and uncle at Cochiti Pueblo, so she essentially lost her father at that time as well.  She had to learn new customs, dances, songs and even a new language because Keres was spoken at Cochiti rather than Tewa as at San Ildefonso.

Her first husband, Juan Rosario Chavez, whom she married in 1908 when she was 15 years old and he 20, passed away three years after their marriage.  She married Felipe Herrera in 1913 and he died in a work accident in 1920.  Her third husband, Epitacio Arquero, outlived Tonita by a few years.  They had a loving marriage and produced five children.

As Tonita’s children got older, they assumed the responsibility of taking care of each other, allowing Tonita more time to pursue painting and to eventually teach painting classes at the Santa Fe Indian School and the Albuquerque Indian School.

Ina Sizer Cassidy commented on Tonita in an article in New Mexico Magazine in 1933:  “I have watched Tonita Peña of Cochiti, for instance, with watercolors and virgin paper, absorbed in materializing her concepts of the ceremonial dances and I have watched her plastering the walls of her adobe home, small palms outspread smoothing the velvety brown mud over the surface with care and creative concentration.  I have also watched her in the ceremonial dances in the plaza, her consecrated hands waving evergreen wands, rhythmically keeping time to the measured beat of the drum, and tread of her bare feet on the hot earth, and there is in all of these activities the same creative aesthetic quality which has made her one of the outstanding Indian painters of New Mexico, and I believe the only Indian woman to attain distinction in this newly revived expression.”

Tonita had a busy life teaching classes, raising children, taking care of the house and husband but found time to produce a large number of paintings.  This pair of paintings of a male and female dancer is each signed in lower right Quah Ah. Tonita peña, a signature she began to use in 1921. 

The paintings show a male and female Basket Dancer, a dance performed by the Winter People at San Ildefonso around Easter time. 

This pair of paintings is priced individually at $1000 each, but we are offering them as a pair for $1750 because we feel they should remain together as they show the male and female in their dance clothing and together they provide a good ethnographic document of early 20^th century dance paraphernalia.  They are framed in matching frames and are ready to hang and enjoy.

Condition: Both appear to be in very good condition with some minor acid burn from the old mats.  Both have recently been reframed using museum quality materials and UV protective glass.

Provenance: from the collection of a gentleman from Colorado

Recommended Reading:  Tonita Peña by Samuel Gray.  This book is currently not available from Adobe Gallery