HeyTaos · Art Colony · 9 min read

The Taos Art Colony

In 1898 a broken wagon wheel delayed Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips north of Taos. Phillips remained in Taos, while Blumenschein returned to New York two months later and kept promoting the place to other artists before settling here permanently in 1919. Their accident became the best-known origin story of an art colony that continued to change for more than a century.

By HeyTaos EditorialUpdated
Couse Home, Studio, and Garden at the Couse-Sharp Historic Site in Taos, New Mexico
Couse-Sharp Historic Site. The preserved home, studio, and garden of E.I. Couse form part of a campus devoted to the early Taos art colony. See the HeyTaos profile.

Six Dates That Explain the Colony

These dates give the basic shape of the story before the detail.

  • 1898. A wagon wheel breaks about twenty miles north of Taos. Blumenschein rides into town for the repair. Phillips remains in Taos, while Blumenschein returns to New York two months later.
  • 1915. Blumenschein, Phillips, Joseph Henry Sharp, E.I. Couse, Oscar E. Berninghaus, and W. Herbert Dunton form the Taos Society of Artists.
  • 1917-1918. Mabel Dodge arrives in Taos in December 1917. In 1918 she buys land bordering Pueblo land and begins building the home later known as Los Gallos with Antonio "Tony" Lujan.
  • 1922. D.H. Lawrence and Frieda Lawrence arrive in September at Mabel's invitation, beginning the first of their New Mexico stays.
  • 1929. Georgia O'Keeffe makes her first extended Taos stay. Already an established artist, she creates early New Mexico works that include paintings and drawings of San Francisco de Asis Church in Ranchos de Taos.
  • 1993. Agnes Martin returns to Taos to live, after earlier periods in the area and decades of work elsewhere in New Mexico. She remains in Taos until her death in 2004.

The Broken Wheel

Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips had studied in France, where Joseph Henry Sharp told them about Taos after his own 1893 visit. In September 1898, while traveling from Denver toward Mexico on a painting trip, Blumenschein and Phillips broke a wagon wheel about twenty miles north of Taos. A coin toss determined that Blumenschein would take the damaged wheel into town for repair while Phillips stayed with the wagon.

Both painters stayed long enough to work in the area, but their paths immediately diverged. Phillips remained in Taos. Two months later Blumenschein returned to New York, where he spoke about northern New Mexico to artists and acquaintances in New York and Paris. He continued returning to Taos and settled permanently in 1919.

The wheel story matters because it became a catalyst, not because Taos lacked art or culture before the painters arrived. Taos Pueblo and longstanding Hispano communities had their own artistic, architectural, religious, and material traditions generations before the art colony formed.

The Taos Society of Artists

By 1915 six professional painters had made Taos a recurring or permanent center of their work: Blumenschein, Phillips, Joseph Henry Sharp, E.I. Couse, Oscar E. Berninghaus, and W. Herbert "Buck" Dunton. They formally organized the Taos Society of Artists that year. Couse had first come to Taos in 1902 at Blumenschein's suggestion and returned annually before making Taos his year-round home later in his career.

The Society sent circuit exhibitions around the country, helping establish Taos as a nationally recognized art center. By the time it dissolved in 1927, Couse-Sharp Historic Site records twelve active members. Later members included Walter Ufer, Victor Higgins, E. Martin Hennings, Julius Rolshoven, Kenneth Adams, and Catharine Critcher.

Their paintings brought national attention to northern New Mexico, but they should be read as interpretations rather than neutral documentation. The artists depicted landscapes, Taos Pueblo people, and Hispano communities through outsider viewpoints shaped by early twentieth-century expectations, markets, and artistic conventions. The work can be formally accomplished while also romanticizing or simplifying the people represented.

The institutions that now preserve this history are unusually concentrated. The Harwood Museum was founded in 1923 while the Society was still active. The Couse-Sharp Historic Site preserves the homes, studios, collections, and archives of Couse and Sharp. The E.L. Blumenschein Home preserves the residence where Blumenschein and his family lived after his permanent move to Taos.

E.I. Couse standing in his studio beside his painting San Juan Pottery in 1911
E.I. Couse in his studio, 1911. The Couse-Sharp Historic Site identifies the work in progress as San Juan Pottery. The preserved studio remains part of the historic site today.

Mabel's Circle

Mabel Dodge arrived in Taos in December 1917 after years in New York and Europe, where she had hosted influential salons and supported artists, writers, and political figures. She rented a place in Taos in January 1918 and soon met Antonio "Tony" Lujan of Taos Pueblo. In June 1918 she bought twelve acres bordering Pueblo land. Tony designed and supervised much of the work that expanded the property into the compound later known as Los Gallos. Mabel and Tony married in 1923, after which she used the surname spelling Luhan.

The house became a creative gathering place. Mabel's own history lists guests and visitors including D.H. and Frieda Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, Robinson Jeffers, Dorothy Brett, and others. D.H. and Frieda Lawrence arrived in September 1922. In early 1924 Mabel gave Frieda a ranch on Lobo Mountain, known by both the Kiowa and Lobo names. University of New Mexico records state that Lawrence insisted Frieda compensate Mabel with the manuscript of Sons and Lovers.

O'Keeffe arrived in 1929 as an already established American artist. She had received a Brooklyn Museum retrospective in 1927, and Stieglitz had been mounting annual exhibitions of her work for years. Her Taos stay opened an important New Mexico chapter in her career. Her 1929 work includes paintings and drawings of San Francisco de Asis Church at Ranchos de Taos, followed by a 1930 New York exhibition that included her earliest New Mexico crosses and church paintings.

Mabel later published four volumes of memoirs under the collective title Intimate Memories, beginning in 1933. Her house remains in operation as a historic inn and conference center focused on arts, writing, education, and retreats.

The Taos Moderns

After the Taos Society dissolved, modernist work in Taos expanded in several directions. Andrew Dasburg had arrived earlier, in 1918, and later taught at the University of New Mexico Art Field School at the Harwood. Emil Bisttram arrived in 1931 and worked in cubist and futurist modes. Louis Ribak and Beatrice Mandelman came in the 1940s, while Clay Spohn, Edward Corbett, Robert Ray, Cliff Harmon, Earl Stroh, and others became associated with the mid-century circle now described as the Taos Moderns.

Agnes Martin's relationship with Taos developed across several periods. Harwood records that she enrolled at the University of New Mexico in 1946, attended the Harwood Art Field School in Taos in the summer of 1947, and lived sporadically in Taos between 1953 and 1957. She returned to New Mexico in 1968 and to Taos in 1993, where she lived until her death in 2004.

The Harwood's Agnes Martin Gallery contains seven paintings that were shown at the 1991 Carnegie International and gifted to the museum by Martin in 1993. The gallery was built specifically for the paintings and inaugurated in 1996. Martin did not originally conceive the paintings as a series or create them for this installation, but accounts of the gallery's development say she later selected seven works from the gift and helped arrange their order. She approved the completed setting and suggested the four Donald Judd benches beneath the oculus. Harwood states that the Whitney Museum of American Art is the only other museum in the world that owns a Martin series intended to be exhibited together.

In her later Taos years, Martin typically painted in the mornings and regularly gathered with friends at the Trading Post Café in the afternoons, a routine remembered by people who knew her in Taos.

Contemporary artist studio in Taos, New Mexico
A contemporary Taos artist studio shows how the colony's working-artist tradition continues beyond the historic period.

The Colony Today

Taos did not stop being an art center when the Society dissolved. The institutional record continues through the Harwood, the Taos Art Museum at Fechin House, Couse-Sharp Historic Site, the Blumenschein Home, Taos Center for the Arts, SOMOS, commercial galleries, studios, exhibitions, and artist-led projects throughout the area.

The contemporary story is also broader than the familiar outsider-artist narrative. Taos Pueblo and Hispano communities are not scenery behind the colony. Their histories, arts, architecture, religious traditions, land relationships, and living communities predate the colony and continue independently of it. A useful history of Taos art has to keep that chronology clear.

That is why the strongest way to understand the colony today is to see both the historical institutions and current work. Start with the museums and preserved studios, then move into contemporary galleries, exhibitions, readings, performances, and working studios across Taos.

Where to See It

Hours, admission, tours, and access can change. The links below lead to current HeyTaos profiles where available, or to the institution's own site when HeyTaos does not yet have a dedicated profile.

Continue exploring Taos art and history

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