AFA Summer 2020

Summer 80 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com E. Martin Hennings (American,1886–1956), Beneath Clouded Skies, ca. 1922. Oil on canvas, 43 x 45 inches. Located within the city limits of Santa Fe, Atalaya Peak is the name of a 9,121-foot summit historically used as a lookout for fires in the town and surrounding valley. Atalaya is a Spanish word that means “watchtower.” Nordfeldt depicted the mountains of this distinct location with choppy, hatching brushstrokes in the style of the French painter Paul Cézanne. B. J. O. Nordfeldt (American, born Sweden, 1878–1955), Santa Fe Landscape (Talaya Peak), 1918–1919. Oil on canvas, 30 x 37½ inches. Oscar Mayer, who was one of the largest benefactors of several members of the Taos Society of Artists, sent E. Martin Hennings to Taos to paint in 1917, and the opportunity proved a pivotal moment in his career. When he returned to Chicago from Taos, his work had changed to a more colorful and precise style of painting using very thin layers of paint, left to dry for long periods of time. In January 1922, soon after he established a permanent home in Taos, Hennings painted Beneath Clouded Skies and won the Art Institute of Chicago’s annual Clyde M. Carr Memorial Prize, which was a $100 award for a meritorious work in landscape, as well as the Fine Arts Building Purchase Prize, which was a $500 award. American Art News said about the painting, “it is another added to the many recent apostles of the beauty of the Southwestern deserts.”