John Young Hunter (1874 - 1955)

John Young Hunter was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1874.  His father was a well-known artist and close friend of John Singer Sargent, under whom Young Hunter studied at the Royal Academy in London.  Young Hunter met with early success in England.  His work was hung at the Tate Gallery in England and in Paris at the Musee de Luxembourg.  He then spent five years in New York where he became a successful portrait painter of fashionable people.  As a boy in England, he saw the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.  This later brought him to Taos.  In 1917 armed with a letter of introduction to Bert Phillips he became a member of the inner circle of Taos Founders and Mabel Dodge.  Eventually Young Hunter built his own studio in Taos and worked there until his death in 1955.  Young Hunter’s work has a wet bravura quality and his colors are tastefully planned.  He did watercolors of Taos, and many paintings on the Indian theme, yet he was most widely known for his portraits.

The Legendary Artists of Taos by Mary Carroll Nelson