Cottonwoods on the Square, c. 1930
Ernest L. Blumenschein (1874-1960) was an American artist and one of the original founders of the Taos Society of Artists. Before moving West, Blumenschein was a New York-based illustrator and teacher at the Art Students League. He began his travels to Taos in the 1910s before permanently settling there in 1919. He is well known for his landscapes and depictions of life in the American West — specifically of the Pueblo and Navajo peoples. Today, his art is held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Taos Art Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and more.
