2026 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 7978 / 379 • View Catalog •
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VERSO
Label, Fenn Galleries, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Label, Nedra Matteucci Galleries, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Label, The Owings Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Berninghaus biographer Gordon E. Sanders wrote, “Oscar Edmund Berninghaus was the total artist. Painting was his vocation and his avocation. Starting as a small child with pencil and ink, he literally painted all his life. Self-taught for the most part, Berninghaus achieved international fame during his lifetime as one of America’s great Western artists, an honor he shared with Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. For more than 50 years he was the subject of hundreds of newspaper articles in St. Louis, New York, Chicago, his adopted New Mexican home, Taos, and almost every other art center in the country. His paintings of the West at the turn of the century and of the Taos Indians were often the cover pieces of some of the nation’s most prestigious publications. Oscar Berninghaus won almost every prize given for American art, including the Altman and Ranger prizes of the National Academy of Design.
“He loved Taos and everything it had to offer. He was a mainstay of the Taos Society of Artists, often settling disputes among the original six founders because of his even temper and detailed care of the Society’s business affairs. Of art and Taos, he had an opinion: he believed that out of the colony in Taos would come a distinctive art – American art. In an interview he told a reporter: ‘We have had French, Dutch, Italian and German art. Now we have American art. I feel that from Taos will come that art’ – and it did.
“What was it exactly that gave Berninghaus paintings that special appeal? There was the magic of Taos – the towering Sangre de Cristo mountains, the Taos Pueblo and its Indians, and the village of Taos itself – old, romantic and steeped in history. There was the blue sky, and deep canyons with rivers of sparkling water. In the fall, the aspen trees turned yellow and gold, and to walk under them was like being in a great cathedral of stained-glass windows. When the breezes stirred, the leaves would tumble to the forest floor like diadems of gold. Taos was indeed a painter’s paradise, and Oscar Berninghaus loved it all. Perhaps the most appealing aspect of a Berninghaus painting is the portrayal of truth. He saw the great landscapes as a statement of unlimited freedom – a statement of nature, and he painted them that way – simply and freely. He painted the Indians as pure – an ideal, in harmony with nature – but human. He loved horses, and his canvases capture his respect for the animal. Berninghaus was also aware of the changing times and its effect on the primitive wilderness and on the Indians. He wanted to preserve this pristine world truthfully on canvas – and he did.”
PROVENANCE
Robert E. McKee, Jr. Collection, El Paso, Texas
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Private collection, Wyoming
LITERATURE
Gordon E. Sanders, Oscar Berninghaus, Taos, New Mexico: Master Painter of American Indians and the Frontier West, Taos Heritage Publishing Company, 1985, p. 93, illustrated
