New Mexico - Figurative Drawings and Watercolors

Pueblo Dancers, painting, by Tonita Pena, Cochiti, Pueblo, Santa Fe, Native Amer Tonita Peña (born 1893 in San Ildefonso, died 1949 in Kewa Pueblo, New Mexico) was born as Quah Ah (meaning white coral beads) but also used the name Tonita Vigil Peña and María Antonia Tonita Peña. Peña was a renowned Pueblo artist, specializing in pen and ink on paper embellished with watercolor. She was a well-known and influential Native American artist and art teacher of the early 1920s and 1930s. Tonita Peña was born on May 10, 1893, at San Ildefonso Pueblo, to Ascensión Vigil Peña and Natividad Peña of San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico. When she was 12, her mother and younger sister died, as a result of complications due to the flu. Her father was unable to care for her and she was taken to Cochití Pueblo and was brought up by her aunt Martina Vigil Montoya, a prominent Cochití Pueblo potter. Peña attended St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe. Edgar Lee Hewett, an anthropologist involved in supervising the nearby Frijoles Canyon excavations (now Bandelier National Monument) was instrumental in developing the careers of several San Ildefonso “self-taught” artists including Tonita Peña. Hewett purchased Peña's paintings for the Museum of New Mexico and supplied her with quality paint and paper. Peña began gaining more notoriety by the end of the 1910s selling an increasing amount of her work to collectors and the La Fonda Hotel. Much of this early work was done of Pueblo cultural subject matter, in a style inspired by historic Native American works, however, her use of an artist's easel and Western painting mediums gained her acceptance among her European-American contemporaries in the art world. At the age of 25, she exhibited her work at museums and galleries in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque area. In the early 1920s, Tonita did not know how much her painting sold for at the Museum of New Mexico, so she wrote letters to the administrators because a local farmer was worried that she got paid too little. In the 1930s Peña was an instructor at the Santa Fe Indian School and at the Albuquerque Indian School and the only woman painter of the San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, which included such noted artists as Alfonso Roybal, Julian Martinez, Abel Sánchez (Oqwa Pi), Crecencio Martinez, and Encarnación Peña. As children, these artists attended San Ildefonso day school which was part of the institution of the Dawes Act of 1887, designed to indoctrinate and assimilate Native American children into mainstream American society. In 1931, Tonita Peña exhibited at the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts which was presented at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City. Works from this exhibition were shown at the 1932 Venice Biennial. That year is the only time Native American artists have shown in the official United States pavilion at that biennial, and Tonita Peña's paintings were part of that exhibition.[1 Her painting Basket Dance, that had shown in the Venice Biennial was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for $225. This was the highest price paid up to this time for a Pueblo painting...

Old Masters Sanguine Drawing of Putti and a Lion 18th century 4 3/4 x 3 1/4 (8 5/8 x 7 1/4 frame) inches An utterly charming depiction in sanguine of 5 putti and a lion on a leash. Excellent details and condition. The innermost frame is period and probably original to the piece with the addition of a later frame added for style. Though the lion, known as the Marzocco, was the symbol of of a free Republic of Florence, it also carried many biblical meanings as well. As such, That a lion denotes the good of celestial love and the derivative truth, in its power, and also that in the opposite sense it denotes the evil of the love of self in its power, is evident from passages in the Word where a lion is mentioned. That it denotes the good of celestial love is evident in John:-- "Behold the lion that is of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath conquered to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof (Rev. 5:5);" Here the Lord is called a lion from the omnipotence belonging to His Divine love and the Divine truth thence derived. In other passages in the Word, Jehovah or the Lord is compared to a lion, as in Hosea:-- "They shall go after Jehovah; He shall roar like a lion; for Be shall roar, and the sons shall come with honor from the sea (Hosea 11:10)." Even more interesting still is the association with Cherubs (or perhaps Putti as they are closely related)... In Isaiah:-- "Thus said Jehovah unto me, Like as when the lion roareth, and the young lion over his prey, if a fulness of shepherds come running upon him, he is not dismayed at their voice, and is not afflicted by their tumult; so shall Jehovah Zebaoth come down to fight upon Mount Zion...