Several American artists who studied with French Orientalists in Paris during the 1880s and 1890s ended up in the village of Taos, New Mexico, where they formed the Taos Society of Artists in 1915. The elements that made this region attractive to these artists were comparable to what had made North Africa enticing to their French counterparts: the clear air of the high desert, the formal challenge of depicting color and shadow in desert light, expansive landscapes, geometric adobe architecture, and Indigenous subjects. As transportation infrastructure improved alongside the colonization of Algeria and the American West, artists traveled to previously inaccessible pockets of these regions, where the brilliant light and ancient geographies of these high desert spaces challenged them to work in increasingly modern hues and forms.
Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant
Evening on the Seashore—Tangiers
about 1891
Oil paint on canvas
58 1/2 × 39 3/4 × 1 1/4 in.
Milwaukee Art Museum: Gift of Marie K. Ingersoll and George L. Kuehn, M1962.1158. Photographed by John R. Glembin
Benjamin-Constant traveled to southern Spain and Morocco during the 1870s and 1880s, writing essays and producing paintings about his travels. His attention to detail combined with expressive brushstrokes, voluptuous color, and interest in so-called exotic subjects resonated with his American students Joseph Henry Sharp, Ernest Blumenschein, and Julius Rolshoven. Benjamin-Constant encouraged his students to look beyond the everyday and to travel for inspiration, even encouraging Blumenschein’s interest in the American West and Indigenous culture.
E. Irving Couse
Pottery Vendor
1916
Oil paint on canvas
45 1/2 x 34 1/2 in.
The Eugene B. Adkins Collection at Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, L2007.0193.
During his years in Paris, E. Irving Couse studied with a number of French artists including William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who became an important mentor for the younger American. In addition to the fundamentals of drawing and composition, Couse absorbed from Bouguereau a visual formula for timeless subjects of preindustrialized simplicity. While their specific subjects and styles differ, both artists’ work underscores nostalgia for romanticized, imagined places and people.
Julius Rolshoven
Tunisian Bedouins
1910
Oil paint on canvas
42 x 37 in.
University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque: Gift of Mrs. Julius Rolshoven, 64.38
Some artists, including Julius Rolshoven, traveled to both North Africa and the American Southwest. Like many of his contemporaries, he perceived a connection between Indigenous cultures of both regions, writing that Taos men were “first cousins to the Arab of North Africa.” Such conflation ignored cultural differences and reinforced biases about so-called primitive people. Yet, he often depicted these subjects with powerful presence, as seen here. This simultaneous orientalizing of and respect for Indigenous cultures reveals contradictory attitudes of the period.
Community Voices
Focus group participants pointed out that artworks are a response to their cultural contexts and not always based in specific observation:
Leon Belly
Pilgrims going to Mecca, (Pelerins allant a la Mecque)
1861
Oil paint on canvas
63 in. × 7 ft. 11¼ in. (160 × 242 cm)
Musee d’Orsay, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY. Photograph by Franck Raux.
I don’t think that the painter would have observed this, in the middle of the desert. But, again, we see this emphasis on the body with the man in the front with the bare chest. When you see everyone else wearing so many clothes, it’s obviously somehow cold, so why was there a need to have someone like this front and center of the painting? This interest in the body, whether that of the male or of the female, for me, says more about the crisis of masculinity in the West from which those painters came and their sense of alienation there in modern times, in the 1800s, than anything about the part of the world that’s being represented.
Jerry Mirabel and Ben Lujan
Pictured L to R: Jerry Mirabal (Taos Pueblo) and Ben Lujan (Taos Pueblo). Courtesy Lunder Research Center, Couse-Sharp Historic Site, Taos, NM
Jerry Mirabal (Taos Pueblo). Courtesy Lunder Research Center, Couse-Sharp Historic Site, Taos, NM
Pictured L to R: Child with Jerry Mirabal (Taos Pueblo). Courtesy Lunder Research Center, Couse-Sharp Historic Site, Taos, NM
Pictured L to R: E. I. Couse and Ben Lujan (Taos Pueblo). Courtesy Lunder Research Center, Couse-Sharp Historic Site, Taos, NM
Ben Lujan and Jerry Mirabal, both from Taos Pueblo, frequently worked as models for Joseph Henry Sharp and E. Irving Couse. During the early 1900s—a period marked by the power of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and of forced assimilation through boarding schools and reservations—the influence of Euro-American culture and trade created a complex environment of racial imbalance but also of economic opportunity. As skilled individuals who understood the art of posing, Lujan and Mirabal collaborated in the production of these artworks and helped financially support their families and communities.
These photographs—candid images from their lives and posed studies for paintings in this gallery—reveal a small glimpse into these men’s lives.
Final Statement
Orientalism often obscures diversity, representing “exotic” people and places as dramatic and sensual. It persists in art and popular culture and informs how we currently think about the US involvement in the modern Arab world and Indigenous sovereignty in the Americas.
To see how Indigenous artists have utilized photography to reclaim representation and affirm their existence, perspectives, and trauma, please visit the exhibition Speaking with Light on display on the first floor.
Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism is organized by the Denver Art Museum. It has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Research for this exhibition was supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. It is presented with generous support from Keith and Kathie Finger, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Sotheby's, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.
