2024 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 265344 / 373 • View Catalog •
Prev Lot
•
Next Lot 
VERSO
Signed and titled
Label, Autry National Center, Los Angeles, California
Label, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Label, The Owings Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Lady of the House was awarded the Oklahoma Centennial Award at the 2007 Prix de West.
Fellow artist Harley Brown wrote, “The Blackfoot and Cheyenne were among Plains tribes that made striped tepees. Tepee markings often told stories, paid homage to events, or entreated the spirits for events such as rain.
“Angles abound in this painting, with folds in the tepee flaps, subtle lines tied to the ground, and the strong central figure augmented with an upright pole. In the background we see domestic activity, a dog, the airing out of hides. In the right foreground a pot, twigs and bags add the necessary ‘clutter’ of domestic life but they add even more to the aesthetics. The child looking at her mother is pivotal to the viewer’s emotional response to the painting. Perhaps we are the intruders that got her attention.”
Describing this painting the artist wrote, “This Blackfoot woman is definitely the keeper of her domain and proud of it. This painting provided me with the opportunity to portray a strong woman in her own environment. She is fulfilling her role as a member of her Blackfoot Nation by caring for her family and tending to all the hard chores that went with her responsibilities as lady of the house.”
PROVENANCE
Private collection, California
EXHIBITED
Prix de West, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 2007
Howard Terpning: Tribute to the Plains People, Autry National Center, Los Angeles, California, 2012
LITERATURE
Prix de West, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 2007, p. 217, illustrated
Harley Brown, Terpning: Tribute to the Plains People, The Greenwich Workshop Press, 2012, p. 88-89, illustrated
