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  • Walter Ufer
    Jul 22, 1876 - Aug 02, 1936
  • Trailing Homeward - Walter Ufer was an American artist based in Taos, New Mexico. His most notable work focuses on scenes of Native American life, particularly of the Pueblo Indians. Walter Ufer is known for Social realist landscape, figure, portrait and Indian genre painting.
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Trailing Homeward
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  • Trailing Homeward

  • Walter Ufer
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  • 1924
    Oil on canvas

    Celebrated for his scenes of Native American life, Walter Ufer was the first of the New Mexico artists to win a prize at the prestigious Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1920. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, and trained as a lithographer, Ufer decided to focus on painting after visiting the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Exposition inspired national pride, as well as the impetus for artists like Ufer to capture and solidify an American identity. Ufer declared, "I believe that if America gets a National Art it will come more from the Southwest than from the Atlantic Board. Because we are really different from Europeans, and the farther away from European influence, the better for us." (as quoted in Macbeth Gallery, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1928)

    Despite his fervent patriotism, Ufer traveled to Hamburg, Dresden and Munich to hone his painting skills. Upon returning to Chicago, art patron Carter Harrison offered to subsidize the artist's painting trip to Taos in 1914. While out West, Ufer, who had trained as a studio artist, converted to painting en plein-air to better capture the brilliant sunlight. The Southwestern sun inspired him to brighten his palette, and he became famous for his light-filled paintings of the Pueblo tribes and the Taos landscape, such as Trailing Homeward. Ufer was so taken with Taos that he decided to make it his home.

    The longer Ufer spent in Taos, the freer his line and more experimental his palette and brushwork became. Trailing Homeward from 1924 displays a rich, painterly surface with a broad treatment of details and a boldness and fluidity of execution. The light in Trailing Homeward transforms this western scene into a brilliant tapestry of color. The bright sun shines from the upper left corner, bathing the scene in the intense Southwestern light and creating strong shadows that dominate the foreground. The undulating shadows seem to bend with the constantly changing light characteristic of the Southwest, and the wispy clouds overhead float off of the picture plane.

    Ufer's work provides an honest depiction of Western life, as well as a frank and original snapshot into the contemporary life of Native Americans. His favorite subjects were Native Americans absorbed in their daily activities or traveling across the brilliant landscape, as in Trailing Homeward. Ufer’s daily involvement with his subjects lent an authenticity and immediacy to the figures and landscape he so revered. Though he had been trained in the romantic approach to subject matter in Germany, Ufer preferred to portray Native Americans realistically as he saw them in contemporary dress, presenting a modern view of Native American life. He was determined to portray them not as remote aboriginal figures, but as men and women at a cultural crossroads, pressured by the forces of American civilization, yet maintaining their cultural heritage.

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Other paintings by Walter Ufer:

Their Audience
Their Audience
Tom and Jim
Tom and Jim
Trailing Homewards
Trailing Homewards
Two Mares
Two Mares
Walter UferWalter Ufer was born in Huckeswagen, Germany. At the age of four, Ufer moved with his family to Louisville, Kentucky, where he grew up. His father was a master gunsmith noted for his fine engraving work. Though Ufer's formal education did not extend beyond grammar school, his promising artistic talent led his father to apprentice him to a commercial lithographer. At age seventeen, Ufer followed his mentor to Germany, working as a journeyman printer and engraver. He soon decided to pursue a career as a painter and enrolled in the Royal Applied Art School and the Royal Academy, both in Dresden.

By 1899 Ufer had returned to the United States to settle in Chicago. He continued his studies at the Art Institute while supporting himself as a commercial lithographer and engraver. In 1911 he married a Danish-born artist, Mary Fredericksen. The couple returned to Europe for two years, traveling extensively and studying with Walter Thor in Munich.

After returning to Chicago in 1914, Ufer, along with fellow artist Victor Higgins, was commissioned by art patron Carter Harrison to paint at Taos. Both men were captivated by the little village and decided to stay. They were invited to join the Taos Society of Artists and became full members in 1917. Though the Ufers travelled extensively, Taos was their home until Ufer's untimely death in 1936.

By all accounts, Ufer was a colorful personality. He was a generous, outspoken man with a sensitive social conscience. During the flu epidemic of 1919, he worked day and night alongside the town's only doctor, ministering to the sick.

Ufer was the first New Mexico artist to win a prize at the Carnegie International. Included among his other numerous awards are the Chicago Art Institutes's First Logan Prize, the Isidor Gold Medal, the Pennsylvania Academy's Temple Gold Medal and the National Academy of Design's Altman Prize, which he won twice. Ufer's brilliant, boldly painted compositions are distinctive images of the Taos Indian surrounded by the magnificent landscape of the region.