"Along Canyon Road", 30" x 30",  Oil on canvas    -     SOLD

E. Martin Hennings (1886-1956)

Born in New Jersey in 1886, died in Taos, NM in 1956.  Early Taos painter of Indian genre subjects and Western landscapes.  Member of the Taos Society in 1921.  Hennings studied at the Art Institute in Chicago where he was brought up. He worked with Walter Thor at Munich Academy in Germany, where he learned the style of academic realism.  When WWI broke out, he returned to Chicago to work as a commercial artist and muralist.  In 1917 he visited Taos and became a resident in 1921.  He painted for a year in Europe, then spent his summers in Taos.  Description of Henning’s work is bright with technically sophisticated compositions.

Information from “Samuel’s Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West”.

<>Hennings childhood ties with Chicago continued through his attendance at the Art Institute of Chicago (1901-1904) and the start of his career as commercial artist.  He became disillusioned with pure illustration and studied in Munich from 1912-1914 under Franz Von Stuck, the developer of Jegendstil, the German equivalent of art nouveau.  The outbreak of WWI forced Hennings to return to Chicago, at a time when Oscar Mayer and Chicago’s Mayor, Carter Harrison Jr., had begun to sponsor trips to New Mexico via the Santa Fe Railway.  He visited Taos in 1917 and in 1924 became a member of the Taos Society of Artists.  Hennings admiration for the Taos Indians and his love of southwestern landscape are evident in his work.  He often painted figures on horseback amid a strong composition of trees and foliage.

“Artists of 20th Century New Mexico” Museum of Santa Fe




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