E. L. BLUMENSCHEIN

E.L. Blumenschein was born in Pittsburgh in 1874 and studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy, and at the École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Julian, both in Paris. To support his studies in Paris, he and his wife worked as illustrators. He started his career as a book and magazine illustrator, but later became one of the leading painters of the Taos art colony, well-known as a painter of Native Americans in the Southwest.

His first trip to the Southwest was in 1897-98, when McClure’s Magazine sent him on a sketching trip. During the summer of 1898, he and his friend Bert Phillips established an art colony in Taos, which attracted artists such as Sharp, Couse, Berninghaus and Dunton. In 1919, his wife’s inheritance made it possible to settle in Taos permanently and give up illustrating for painting. Their daughter, Helen Greene, also became an illustrator.