The Taos Society of Artists is the most-collected American regional art colony of the early twentieth century, and the published literature about its twelve principal members constitutes one of the deepest bibliographic pools in Western American art scholarship. Founded formally in July 1915 by six painters who had been working in and around Taos since the late 1890s, the Society operated for twelve years before dissolving in 1927. In that interval, and in the decades of continued painting that followed, the TSA members produced a body of work that has generated an extraordinary volume of exhibition catalogues, critical monographs, biographies, biographical dictionaries, patronage studies, and institutional collection publications. The scholarship runs from Laura Bickerstaff's pioneering Pioneer Artists of Taos (1955), written while several TSA members were still alive, through the comprehensive academic studies of the 1990s and into the continuing institutional catalogue programs of the twenty-first century.
This page is the collecting reference for that literature as it surfaces through NMLP intake from estate libraries across northern New Mexico. The books concentrate in three donor demographics: Taos and Santa Fe arts-community estates (the deepest concentration, often including nearly-complete sets of the canonical references plus rarer individual-artist monographs), Albuquerque UNM-art-history-faculty estates, and collector estates from the broader Western American art market. The NMLP closed-signature-pools reference tracks the principal TSA closed pools: all twelve members are deceased (Rolshoven 1930, Couse 1936, Ufer 1936, Dunton 1936, Higgins 1949, Berninghaus 1952, Sharp 1953, Hennings 1956, Phillips 1956, Blumenschein 1960, Critcher 1964, Adams 1966).
Last verified May 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred
The 1898 broken-wheel legend and the colony's founding mythology
Taos Society of Artists Books, including Pioneer Artists of Taos (1955), are sought-after collectibles commanding premium prices among Southwest and Western Americana collectors. The Taos painting tradition predates the Society by seventeen years. In September 1898, two young painters — Bert Geer Phillips, 30, trained at the Art Students League in New York and the Académie Julian in Paris, and Ernest L. Blumenschein, 24, also trained at the Académie Julian — were traveling south from Denver toward Mexico on a summer sketching trip. In the mountains north of Taos, their wagon broke a wheel. Blumenschein rode the remaining twenty miles to Taos to find a blacksmith. He returned with the wheel repaired, but he had seen something on the ride into the valley that neither man had expected: a landscape of extraordinary clarity, a light that seemed to define form from within, and a living Pueblo community whose architecture and ceremonies offered subjects unlike anything available in the established painting centers of the East Coast and Europe.
Both men decided to stay. Phillips remained permanently, spending the rest of his career in Taos. Blumenschein returned seasonally from his New York studio for two decades before finally moving permanently in 1919. The broken-wagon-wheel founding story became the origin mythology of the Taos art colony and is reproduced in essentially every published account of the TSA. Whether the wheel actually broke or the incident was embellished across decades of retelling is gently debated in the literature — Bickerstaff accepted the story at face value in 1955, writing from personal interviews with the surviving founders; Robert R. White in 1998 treated it as established fact while noting the narrative convenience of the anecdote — but the story serves a structural function regardless. It provides the colony with a founding moment: not a gradual drift of painters toward an attractive location, but a single mechanical failure that revealed a landscape and changed the course of American painting.
Joseph Henry Sharp had visited Taos before either of them. Sharp, born in Bridgeport, Ohio, in 1859, trained in Cincinnati, Munich, and Paris, was the senior figure of the future colony. He had been painting Native American subjects since the late 1880s and had visited Taos as early as 1893, drawn by the same Pueblo subjects that would anchor the TSA aesthetic. He bought a house in Taos in 1909 and was painting there regularly by the time Phillips and Blumenschein arrived. Eanger Irving Couse, Oscar E. Berninghaus, and W. Herbert Dunton joined the community across the first decade of the twentieth century. By 1915, the six painters constituted a coherent working group and formally organized as the Taos Society of Artists on July 1, 1915, with Sharp as the founding president.
The Society's purpose and the 1915–1927 operation
The TSA was organized for a specific commercial purpose: to coordinate exhibition opportunities. The founders were not modernists breaking with tradition; they were representational painters working in a European academic tradition who needed access to the New York, Chicago, and St. Louis gallery system to sell their work. By organizing collectively, the six (and later twelve) members could mount traveling exhibitions that carried greater institutional weight than individual shows. The Society arranged circuit exhibitions — paintings shipped from Taos to major cities, displayed at commercial galleries and art associations, and returned — that sustained the members' commercial viability across two decades.
Across the next twelve years, the Society admitted additional members through formal vote. Victor Higgins and Walter Ufer were admitted in 1917. E. Martin Hennings and Catharine Critcher were admitted in 1924, Critcher as the only female member. Kenneth M. Adams was admitted in 1926, the youngest member, only a year before the Society dissolved. Julius Rolshoven was briefly associated. The Society dissolved formally in 1927. The dissolution was driven by several converging pressures: the changing economics of the exhibition circuit as modernism reshaped gallery programming, personal frictions among members whose stylistic commitments diverged (Higgins was moving toward modernism while Couse and Sharp remained firmly representational), and a generational sense that the formal society structure had served its purpose. The dissolution did not end the Taos colony; work by surviving members continued for decades. Sharp painted until shortly before his 1953 death at 93. Hennings continued into the 1950s. Adams, the youngest, painted into the 1960s and taught at UNM from 1938 to 1963, forming a direct bridge between the TSA generation and the mid-century New Mexico art world.
The six founders
Ernest L. Blumenschein
1874–1960 · Founder · The colony's institutional figure · Closed pool
Born Pittsburgh, trained at the Art Students League New York and the Académie Julian Paris. Arrived Taos September 1898 with Phillips; maintained dual residency in NYC and Taos until permanently moving in 1919. The TSA's most institutionally connected member, with the strongest gallery relationships in New York. His home in Taos (the E.L. Blumenschein Home and Museum, operated by Taos Historic Museums, 222 Ledoux Street) is preserved as a house museum with original furnishings and a Blumenschein paintings collection. The principal Blumenschein monograph is by Mary Melton. Blumenschein's Taos subjects combined Pueblo figures with landscape elements in increasingly stylized compositions through the 1920s and 1930s; his late work shows a distinctive use of saturated blues and golds against the Sangre de Cristo range.
Bert Geer Phillips
1868–1956 · Founder · Pueblo and Hispano subjects, lyrical late style · Closed pool
Born Hudson NY, trained at the Art Students League and the Académie Julian Paris. Arrived Taos September 1898 with Blumenschein (the broken-wagon-wheel founding) and remained permanently for the rest of his career — the only founder who never left. Pueblo and Hispano subjects with a lyrical, often allegorical late style. The most extensively biographically documented founder in the early literature. The principal Phillips scholarship includes work by Julie Schimmel. Phillips's continuous residence in Taos from 1898 until his 1956 death at 87 makes him the colony's longest continuous resident.
Joseph Henry Sharp
1859–1953 · Founder, the senior painter, the longest TSA career · Closed pool
Born Bridgeport OH, trained Cincinnati, Munich, and Paris. The senior figure of the TSA — Sharp was 56 when the Society was founded — and the longest-active painter; he was still painting in the early 1950s, more than half a century after first visiting Taos. His Pueblo and Native portrait subjects are the most commercially recognized of any TSA member. His Taos home and studio (adjacent to the Couse property) is preserved as part of the Couse-Sharp Historic Site (146 Kit Carson Road). The principal Sharp monograph is by Forrest King. Sharp's Native American portrait work, documented across visits to Plains and Pueblo communities from the 1880s onward, represents the longest sustained portraiture program of any TSA member.
Eanger Irving Couse
1866–1936 · Founder · Pueblo subjects, the most commercially successful · Closed pool
Born Saginaw MI, trained Académie Julian Paris. The most commercially successful TSA member during the active period. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway used Couse's paintings on its annual calendar for sixteen consecutive years (1923–1938, the program continuing past Couse's 1936 death), distributing approximately 250,000 reproductions of his Pueblo subjects to the American public annually. The AT&SF calendar program is the largest single mass-circulation publication of any TSA member's work. Couse's Taos home (adjacent to Sharp's) is preserved as part of the Couse-Sharp Historic Site. The principal Couse family scholarship is by Virginia Couse Leavitt, a descendant who has authored and contributed to the Couse-Sharp Historic Site publication program.
Oscar E. Berninghaus
1874–1952 · Founder · Narrative subjects, often St. Louis-based · Closed pool
Born St. Louis MO and based there for much of his career, with annual Taos residencies. Berninghaus was the most narratively driven of the TSA founders, painting Pueblo daily life, NM landscapes, and broader Western frontier-history subjects with a storytelling emphasis that distinguished his work from the portrait focus of Sharp and Couse. His first Taos visit in 1899 was prompted by an illustration assignment for a Denver newspaper; he returned annually and eventually maintained a full studio in Taos while keeping his commercial illustration practice in St. Louis.
W. Herbert "Buck" Dunton
1878–1936 · Founder · Western and cowboy subjects, transitional figure · Closed pool
Born Augusta ME, trained New York City. The most "Western School"–aligned TSA founder; his cowboy and ranching subjects are stylistically distinct from the Pueblo-and-Hispano focus of the other founders. Often considered a transitional figure between the Frederick Remington / Charles Russell Western School and the TSA's Pueblo aesthetic. Dunton died in 1936 at 58, the youngest death among the founders. His broader Western art bibliography is collected alongside the TSA canonical works.
The later members
Victor Higgins
1884–1949 · Admitted 1917 · The most stylistically progressive TSA member · Closed pool
Born Shelbyville IN, trained Chicago and Académie Julian Paris. The most stylistically progressive TSA member, increasingly modernist through the 1920s and 1930s. His later work incorporates Post-Impressionist and proto-Abstract Expressionist elements that none of the other TSA painters approached. Stylistically the bridge between the TSA and the later Taos modernist generation (Andrew Dasburg, Marsden Hartley). The principal Higgins monograph is Dean A. Porter, Victor Higgins: An American Master (1991), the most thorough individual-member study in the TSA literature.
Walter Ufer
1876–1936 · Admitted 1917 · Pueblo subjects with social commentary · Closed pool
Born Louisville KY, trained Chicago and Munich. Distinctive among the TSA for the social-commentary content of his Pueblo subjects — Ufer's paintings frequently depicted Pueblo people in contemporary clothing and in narrative situations that addressed Native-Anglo social dynamics directly. The most politically engaged TSA painter. The principal Ufer scholarship is by Dean Porter. Ufer died in 1936 at 60, one of three TSA members (with Couse and Dunton) who died that same year.
E. Martin Hennings
1886–1956 · Admitted 1924 · Lyrical Pueblo and landscape subjects · Closed pool
Born Pennsgrove NJ, trained Chicago and Munich. Lyrical Pueblo and landscape subjects with distinctive treatment of cottonwood and piñon light. Hennings continued painting into the mid-1950s after the TSA dissolved. The principal Hennings monograph is by Robert White, the same scholar who authored the comprehensive 1998 TSA history. Hennings's dappled-light cottonwood paintings are among the most immediately recognizable images in the TSA canon.
Catharine Critcher
1868–1964 · Admitted 1924 · The only female TSA member · Closed pool
Born Westmoreland County VA, trained Cooper Union and the Académie Julian Paris. The only female TSA member, admitted in 1924 after years of working in Taos and Washington DC. Primarily Pueblo subjects with portrait focus. Critcher is the longest-lived TSA member, dying in 1964 at 95. Her presence in the membership is now recognized as a foundational moment for women's participation in the Western American art establishment. Critcher scholarship has expanded since the 1990s as the TSA literature has increasingly addressed the gender dynamics of the colony.
Kenneth M. Adams
1897–1966 · Admitted 1926 · The youngest member · Closed pool
Born Topeka KS, trained Chicago and the Académie Julian Paris. The youngest TSA member, admitted only a year before the Society dissolved. Mexican-mestizo and Hispano subjects with distinctive earth-tone palettes. Adams continued painting for forty years after the dissolution; his UNM teaching career (1938–1963) and his Albuquerque residence put him in continuous contact with the next generation of NM painters, making him the principal personal link between the TSA and the mid-century New Mexico art world.
Julius Rolshoven
1858–1930 · Briefly associated · Closed pool
Born Detroit MI, trained Munich and Paris. Briefly associated with the TSA, sometimes excluded from the canonical twelve. Rolshoven had an extensive international career with extended residencies in Europe and North Africa; his Taos period was the latest phase of a longer career. He died in 1930, three years after the Society dissolved, at 72.
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The canonical scholarship — the essential library
Laura Bickerstaff — Pioneer Artists of Taos
1955 first edition Sage Books / Sage Press, Denver · UNM Press revised expanded 1983
The foundational mid-century survey and the first comprehensive published history of the TSA. Bickerstaff conducted interviews with several TSA members who were still alive in the early 1950s (Phillips, Berninghaus, Sharp, Hennings, Critcher, Adams), producing biographical chapters grounded in primary-source recollection that cannot be replicated. The 1955 Sage Books first edition is the collector target and one of the scarcest items in the TSA literature. The original dust jacket (the iconic Taos Pueblo cover photograph) is essential to full collector value. The 1983 UNM Press revised expanded edition incorporates additional scholarship and updates the membership record; it is a separate collector object rather than a simple reprint, and a serious collector wants both. The 1955 first in fine condition with the dust jacket intact trades in the mid-to-upper three-figure range and is genuinely scarce; the 1983 UNM Press revised is more available and trades in the low three-figure range.
Patricia Janis Broder — Taos: A Painter's Dream
1980 Little, Brown and Company first edition
The major popular-press monograph with extensive color plates, biographical chapters for each major member, the Mabel Dodge Luhan circle context, and the broader Taos modernist generation (Andrew Dasburg, John Marin, Marsden Hartley). Broder brought the TSA story to a national audience beyond the specialized Western American art community. The 1980 Little, Brown first edition with original dust jacket is the collector target and trades in the mid three-figure range in fine condition. Little, Brown reprinted the book several times in the 1980s and 1990s; subsequent printings trade at meaningful discounts to the first. Broder's broader Western American art bibliography (American Indian Painting and Sculpture 1981, Bronzes of the American West 1974) is collected alongside the Taos monograph.
Robert R. White — The Taos Society of Artists
1998 University of New Mexico Press
The comprehensive twentieth-century scholarly history. Full membership records, exhibition catalog with documented dates and venues, the most thorough biographical treatment of each member. The principal twentieth-century scholarly reference and the definitive source for any TSA chronology question. White was a Santa Fe-based art historian whose research drew on the Harwood Museum archives and the TSA primary documents preserved at UNM's Center for Southwest Research and at the various member-house museums. The 1998 UNM Press first edition with original dust jacket is the collector target. White also authored the principal E. Martin Hennings monograph, making him one of the most prolific contributors to the TSA published canon.
Dean A. Porter, Teresa Hayes Ebie & Suzan Campbell — Taos Artists and Their Patrons, 1898–1950
1999 Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame
The most detailed patronage study in the TSA literature. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Snite Museum, this catalogue examines the economic and social relationships between the TSA painters and the collectors, dealers, and institutions that supported them. Porter, who was director of the Snite Museum, brought an institutional perspective to the patronage dynamics that earlier studies had addressed only peripherally. The book documents the gallery networks, the railroad patronage (particularly the AT&SF Railway's relationship with Couse), the role of Eastern collectors who visited Taos, and the early museum acquisitions that established the TSA members' institutional presence. Porter also authored the Victor Higgins monograph (1991) and contributed to the Ufer scholarship, making him the most active late-twentieth-century TSA scholar.
Van Deren Coke — Taos and Santa Fe: The Artist's Environment, 1882–1942
1963 University of New Mexico Press · Early critical study
The foundational comparative study of the Taos and Santa Fe art colonies. Coke, who served as director of the UNM Art Museum and later as photography curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, was among the first scholars to treat the two colonies as distinct but related phenomena. His 1963 study examines the environmental, cultural, and economic factors that drew artists to both communities and the aesthetic differences that distinguished them. The book predates the Bickerstaff 1983 revision and the major 1990s scholarship, making it a primary source for the critical reception of the TSA during the mid-twentieth century. The 1963 UNM Press first edition is collected and trades in the mid two-figure to low three-figure range.
David Witt — The Taos Artists: A Historical Narrative and Biographical Dictionary
1984
The biographical dictionary format — alphabetized entries for every artist who worked in Taos during the colony period — makes Witt's book the reference-desk companion to the narrative histories. Witt, who served as curator at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, had direct access to the institutional archives and the local oral tradition. His dictionary entries include artists beyond the TSA membership, capturing the broader colony including visiting painters, Mabel Dodge Luhan circle artists, and the transitional figures who linked the TSA generation to the mid-century. The Harwood Museum context gives Witt's biographical entries a granularity that the narrative histories cannot match.
Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall — Modernist Painting in New Mexico, 1913–1935
1984 University of New Mexico Press
Udall's study examines the intersection of the TSA's representational tradition with the emerging modernist currents that arrived in New Mexico through artists like Andrew Dasburg, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and the broader Mabel Dodge Luhan circle. The book is essential for understanding Victor Higgins's stylistic evolution and for placing the TSA within the broader American modernist context. The 1984 UNM Press first edition is the collector target. Udall's broader scholarship on women artists in the Southwest extends the gender analysis that Critcher's membership invites.
James Moore — The Enchanted Desert: The Taos Art Colony
1996
Moore's study focuses on the mythology of the Taos colony — the enchantment narrative, the broken-wheel legend, the construction of Taos as an artists' paradise — and examines how that mythology shaped both the painters' self-understanding and the reception of their work. The book is useful for collectors interested in the cultural history of the colony rather than the strictly art-historical analysis that dominates the academic literature.
Individual painter monographs
The TSA literature includes individual monographs for most of the major members, typically published through institutional programs at the Harwood Museum, the Couse-Sharp Historic Site, or through UNM Press and Museum of New Mexico Press. These monographs are the deepest published sources on individual painters and are essential for collectors focusing on a specific member.
Dean A. Porter — Victor Higgins: An American Master
1991 · The most thorough individual-member study in the TSA literature
Porter's Higgins monograph is the benchmark for individual-member scholarship. It treats Higgins's full career from his Indiana origins through his Chicago training, his arrival in Taos, his increasingly modernist style, and his 1949 death. The extensive plate section reproduces works from public and private collections. Porter's access to the Snite Museum resources and his network of Western American art collectors gave the monograph a documentation depth that smaller institutional publications could not match. This is the collector target for Higgins-focused libraries.
Virginia Couse Leavitt — Couse scholarship
Couse-Sharp Historic Site publications
Virginia Couse Leavitt, a descendant of Eanger Irving Couse, has authored and contributed to the Couse-Sharp Historic Site's ongoing publication program. Her scholarship draws on family archives, the preserved Couse studio (with original tools, paint inventories, and models' costumes), and the AT&SF Railway correspondence that documents the sixteen-year calendar program. The Couse-Sharp publications are typically modest in print run and trade above their cover prices in the secondary market.
Forrest King — Sharp monograph
The principal Joseph Henry Sharp study
King's Sharp monograph traces the senior painter's career from his Cincinnati training through his Munich and Paris studies, his early Native American portrait work across the Plains and Pueblo communities, his Taos residency from 1909 onward, and his extraordinarily long painting career extending into the early 1950s. Sharp's pre-TSA Native portraiture — painted at Standing Rock, Crow Agency, and other reservation sites — distinguishes his bibliography from the other founders and connects his collecting literature to the broader Native American art-documentation tradition.
Mary Melton — Blumenschein study · Julie Schimmel — Phillips scholarship · Robert White — Hennings monograph · Dean Porter — Ufer scholarship
Various publishers and institutional programs
The remaining individual-member monographs are typically published through the Harwood Museum, UNM Press, Museum of New Mexico Press, or through gallery-exhibition catalogues from Gerald Peters Gallery, Nedra Matteucci Galleries, or other Santa Fe and Taos dealers. Each tends to be the principal published reference for the artist it covers. Collectors need to identify which institutional monograph is canonical for each TSA member; the publication record varies by member and is not consolidated in a single bibliography.
The Taos Pueblo relationship
Taos Pueblo was central to the TSA painters' subject matter, and the relationship between the colony and the Pueblo is one of the most consequential cultural dynamics in American art history. Virtually every founding and active member painted Pueblo subjects extensively, depicting ceremonies, daily life, the multi-story adobe architecture, and individual portraits. The Pueblo provided models, access to ceremonial events within limits set by tribal authority, and the visual landscape that defined the colony's aesthetic identity. Couse's AT&SF Railway calendar paintings distributed Pueblo imagery to a quarter-million American households annually for sixteen years. Sharp's lifetime of Native portraiture included extensive Taos Pueblo subjects alongside his earlier Plains work. Phillips, Higgins, Ufer, and Hennings all built major portions of their careers on Pueblo subjects.
The relationship was complex and asymmetric. The painters benefited commercially from Pueblo imagery, building careers and reputations on subjects derived from a community that had limited control over its own representation. Models were paid, but the compensation was modest relative to the commercial value the paintings generated. The painters generally approached Pueblo subjects with respect by the standards of their era, but the era's standards permitted an appropriative dynamic that contemporary scholarship has examined critically. Ufer was the TSA member who addressed this asymmetry most directly within his paintings, depicting Pueblo people in contemporary clothing and in narrative situations that acknowledged the social tensions between the Native and Anglo communities.
Since the 1990s, the scholarship has increasingly addressed this dynamic. The Taos Pueblo tribal archives contain material on the colony from the Pueblo's perspective. The distinction between respectful documentation and cultural appropriation is a recurring theme in the more recent exhibition catalogues, particularly those mounted by institutions that hold both TSA paintings and Native American collections (the Eiteljorg Museum, the Heard Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian have all addressed this intersection). Collectors building TSA libraries should be aware that the contemporary literature treats the Pueblo relationship as a central critical question rather than a background detail.
The Taos Society vs. the Santa Fe art colony
The Taos Society of Artists and the Santa Fe art colony operated contemporaneously but with distinct identities, and the distinction matters for collectors working through the literature. The TSA painters were primarily representational, focused on Pueblo and Hispanic subjects, and organized formally as a society for coordinated exhibition. The Santa Fe colony was more diffuse, more architecturally focused (the Pueblo Revival movement was centered in Santa Fe), and more closely connected to the institutional infrastructure that the state capital offered: the Museum of Fine Arts (opened 1917 in its iconic Pueblo Revival building on the Santa Fe Plaza), the School of American Research (now the School for Advanced Research), and the Laboratory of Anthropology.
Van Deren Coke's Taos and Santa Fe: The Artist's Environment, 1882–1942 (UNM Press, 1963) is the foundational comparative study. Coke identifies the environmental and cultural factors that distinguished the two communities: Taos offered the Pueblo, the Sangre de Cristo range, and relative isolation; Santa Fe offered institutional support, a railroad connection, and proximity to the government and commercial infrastructure of the territorial (and after 1912, state) capital. Some artists worked in both locations. The Mabel Dodge Luhan circle, though based in Taos, was more closely aligned with the modernist sensibilities of the Santa Fe institutions than with the TSA's representational tradition.
For collectors, the distinction means that TSA-specific books (Bickerstaff, White, Broder) focus on the Taos painters and their exhibition circuit, while the broader NM art colony literature (Coke, Udall, Edna Robertson and Sarah Nestor's Artists of the Canyons and Caminos 1976/2006) encompasses both communities. A well-rounded collector library includes both the TSA-specific and the comparative references.
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The Mabel Dodge Luhan circle — the parallel literary salon
Operating in Taos contemporaneously with but largely separately from the TSA was Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879–1962), the wealthy patron and salon host whose Taos residence Los Gallos drew an extraordinary roster of writers, artists, and intellectuals through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Luhan moved from Greenwich Village to Taos in 1917, married Tony Lujan of Taos Pueblo in 1923 (his name was anglicized as Luhan), and operated her residence as the most consequential American literary and art salon of the early-to-mid twentieth century.
The Luhan guest list across two decades reads as a comprehensive index of American and European cultural figures: D.H. Lawrence (extended visits 1922–1925, producing Mornings in Mexico, The Plumed Serpent, and several major essays), Georgia O'Keeffe (first visit 1929, then sustained NM residency), Willa Cather (researching Death Comes for the Archbishop), Carl Jung, Aldous Huxley, Mary Austin, Robinson Jeffers, Ansel Adams, Marsden Hartley, Andrew Dasburg, John Collier, Leopold Stokowski, Martha Graham, and dozens of others. Luhan's four-volume autobiography Intimate Memories (Harcourt Brace 1933–1937: Background 1933, European Experiences 1935, Movers and Shakers 1936, Edge of Taos Desert 1937) is the principal primary source for the Taos arts community of the 1920s–1940s.
The Luhan circle overlapped chronologically with the TSA but was largely separate from it. The TSA founders were generally not part of the Luhan salon — the painters were a generation older than Luhan, stylistically representational rather than modernist, and politically more conservative. Some younger TSA-period painters (Andrew Dasburg as a visitor, Marsden Hartley during his Taos periods) bridged the two communities. The principal Luhan biographical reference is Lois Palken Rudnick's Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds (UNM Press 1984). Complete four-volume Luhan Intimate Memories sets in fine condition with original dust jackets are scarce and cross into the low four-figure range.
The institutional canon — museums and historic sites
Harwood Museum of Art (Taos NM, 238 Ledoux Street) — founded 1923 by Burritt Elihu Harwood and Lucy Case Harwood; operated by the University of New Mexico since 1935. The institutional anchor for TSA collecting and scholarship; holds the most comprehensive TSA collection in any single institution and the most extensive archive of TSA-period correspondence and ephemera. The Harwood's exhibition catalogue program, produced across decades, constitutes an essential layer of the published TSA literature. David Witt's tenure as curator at the Harwood directly informed his 1984 biographical dictionary.
Couse-Sharp Historic Site (Taos NM, 146 Kit Carson Road) — preserves the adjacent home-studios of Eanger Irving Couse and Joseph Henry Sharp. Operated by the Couse Foundation as a working museum; the site includes the original studios with the artists' tools, paint inventories, models' costumes, and archival material. The only TSA-member home-studios preserved in essentially original condition. The Couse-Sharp publication program, including Virginia Couse Leavitt's scholarship, produces catalogues with modest print runs that trade above cover prices.
E.L. Blumenschein Home and Museum (Taos NM, 222 Ledoux Street) — operated by Taos Historic Museums; preserves the Blumenschein family home as a house museum with original furnishings and a Blumenschein paintings collection. The house itself is a document of the TSA-period domestic environment in Taos.
New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, 107 W. Palace Avenue) — the major NM-regional institutional holding of TSA work. The museum's 1917 opening exhibition included TSA members in its founding program, establishing a direct institutional link between the state's art museum and the Taos colony from the beginning. Continuing TSA collecting and exhibition through the present.
Stark Museum of Art (Orange TX, 712 Green Avenue) — founded 1976 by Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark. Holds the Stark family's collection of Western American art including substantial TSA holdings. One of the most important non-NM TSA collections. Stark Museum exhibition catalogues are collected.
Anschutz Collection (Denver CO) — privately operated by the Philip F. Anschutz family. Holds major Western American art including substantial TSA work. The collection is sometimes available for institutional loan and documented in catalogue publications.
Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art (Indianapolis IN, 500 W. Washington Street) — founded 1989. Holds significant TSA collections in the Western art and Native American art context. The Eiteljorg's dual Western-art and Native-American mission makes it a particularly relevant institution for examining the TSA's Pueblo subject matter.
The publisher landscape
Three publishers dominate the TSA scholarly literature. The University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque) is the principal academic publisher, responsible for Robert R. White's The Taos Society of Artists (1998), Van Deren Coke's Taos and Santa Fe (1963), Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall's Modernist Painting in New Mexico (1984), the Bickerstaff 1983 revised edition, Lois Palken Rudnick's Luhan biography (1984), and numerous individual exhibition catalogues. UNM Press titles are the academic backbone of any TSA library.
Museum of New Mexico Press (Santa Fe) publishes exhibition catalogues from the New Mexico Museum of Art and related state institutions. Their production values are typically high, with strong color reproduction and scholarly apparatus. Museum of New Mexico Press catalogues from major TSA exhibitions are collected alongside the UNM Press academic titles.
Northland Press (Flagstaff, Arizona) published important Western art monographs through the 1970s and 1980s, including titles on individual TSA members and on the broader Taos and Santa Fe art colonies. Northland Press books are often beautifully produced with high-quality color plates and are collected for their physical quality as well as their scholarly content.
Beyond these three, the institutional publishers matter: the Harwood Museum, the Couse-Sharp Historic Site, the Snite Museum of Art at Notre Dame (Porter/Ebie/Campbell 1999), the Stark Museum, the Eiteljorg, and the various gallery-publishers who produce exhibition catalogues for their commercial shows.
The dealer-publisher dimension
Three Santa Fe galleries function simultaneously as dealers in TSA paintings and as publishers of scholarly catalogues that extend the published literature. Gerald Peters Gallery (Santa Fe) is the largest Western American art gallery in New Mexico and has published substantial exhibition catalogues for TSA-related shows. Peters Gallery catalogues typically feature scholarly essays by art historians, extensive plate sections, and exhibition checklists that document provenance for individual paintings. Nedra Matteucci Galleries (Santa Fe) specializes in Western American art including TSA material and has published catalogues with similar scholarly apparatus. Zaplin Lampert Gallery (Santa Fe) handles TSA paintings and has contributed to the published literature through exhibition catalogues and dealer publications.
These gallery-published catalogues occupy a distinctive position in the collector market. They are not academic publications in the university-press sense, but their scholarly content — contributed by the same art historians who write for UNM Press and Museum of New Mexico Press — gives them reference value beyond their commercial function. Print runs are typically limited to the gallery's client base, and catalogues from important exhibitions trade above their original prices in the secondary market. A comprehensive TSA library includes the major gallery catalogues alongside the university-press scholarship.
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The auction market for TSA paintings and books
TSA paintings trade at the major auction houses and at the specialized Western American art sales that have developed into a distinct market segment. Christie's and Sotheby's handle TSA material in their American art departments. Heritage Auctions (Dallas) has developed a substantial Western art department that regularly handles TSA paintings. Bonhams handles TSA material in its American art sales. The Coeur d'Alene Art Auction (Reno, NV, held annually in July) is the premier Western American art auction and the single most important annual sale for TSA paintings. The Coeur d'Alene auction's published catalogues, produced annually since the 1980s, constitute a comprehensive price-history archive for TSA paintings and are themselves collected.
TSA art books in collectible condition surface at these same auction houses in their rare-books departments, at specialist book dealers handling Western Americana and art-reference material, and through the general antiquarian book market. The Bickerstaff 1955 first edition is the most sought-after single item and appears at auction irregularly; when it does appear in fine condition with the dust jacket, it commands attention from both TSA painting collectors (who want the book as a reference companion to their painting collections) and from book collectors focused on Western Americana.
Identification problems for collectors
One. Bickerstaff Pioneer Artists of Taos 1955 Sage Books first vs. 1983 UNM Press revised. The 1955 Sage Books first edition (Denver, with the iconic Taos Pueblo cover photograph and original dust jacket) is the foundational text. The 1983 UNM Press revised expanded edition incorporates additional scholarship and is a separate collector object with different content rather than a simple reprint. The two books are easily distinguished by publisher imprint and binding; the identification point is not confusing either edition with the other but recognizing that both are collected and that the 1955 first trades at a substantial premium to the 1983 revised.
Two. The Mabel Dodge Luhan Intimate Memories four-volume set integrity. The four volumes published 1933–1937 by Harcourt Brace are most valuable as a complete set with all original dust jackets intact. Single-volume copies trade at meaningful discounts to the complete set. Edge of Taos Desert (1937) is the most NM-relevant volume and commands the highest individual-volume premium when sold separately.
Three. Broder Taos: A Painter's Dream 1980 Little, Brown first vs. subsequent printings. The 1980 Little, Brown and Company first edition with original dust jacket is the collector target. Little, Brown reprinted the book several times in the 1980s and 1990s; subsequent printings are identifiable by the copyright page and trade at meaningful discounts.
Four. The Robert R. White 1998 UNM Press first edition vs. subsequent printings. The 1998 UNM Press first edition with original dust jacket is the collector target. The book has remained available through UNM Press, but the first edition is identifiable by the copyright page.
Five. Individual-artist monograph editions. The Harwood Museum, the Couse-Sharp Historic Site, the Stark Museum, the Anschutz Collection, and the Eiteljorg have all published individual-artist monographs from the 1990s through the present. Each tends to be the principal published reference for the artist it covers. Collectors need to identify which institutional monograph is canonical for each TSA member; the publication record varies by member and is not consolidated in a single bibliography.
Six. The Porter/Ebie/Campbell 1999 Snite Museum catalogue. Published to accompany a specific exhibition, this catalogue had a limited institutional print run and trades above its original price. The Snite Museum imprint (University of Notre Dame) is not a typical Western American art publisher, so the book can be overlooked by collectors who search only the UNM Press and Museum of New Mexico Press lists.
Seven. Gallery-published catalogues vs. institutional catalogues. Gerald Peters Gallery, Nedra Matteucci Galleries, and Zaplin Lampert Gallery catalogues have scholarly content but are published commercially. Collectors should distinguish these from the institutional catalogues published by the museums, though both categories are collected. Gallery catalogues from important exhibitions can be harder to locate in the secondary market because their distribution was originally limited to the gallery's client list.
The collector market — three tiers
Tier 1 trophy items. Bickerstaff Pioneer Artists of Taos 1955 Sage Books first in fine condition with dust jacket; complete four-volume Luhan Intimate Memories Harcourt Brace 1933–1937 firsts with original dust jackets; Porter Victor Higgins: An American Master 1991 in fine condition; Porter/Ebie/Campbell Taos Artists and Their Patrons 1999 Snite Museum first; signed individual-artist monographs from the 1990s–2010s when they include signatures from the artists' surviving family members or from major scholars. The Bickerstaff 1955 first and the complete Luhan set trade in the mid three-figure to low four-figure range. The patronage study and the Higgins monograph trade in the mid three-figure range.
Tier 2 collector targets. Broder Taos: A Painter's Dream 1980 Little, Brown first; White The Taos Society of Artists 1998 UNM Press first; Bickerstaff 1983 UNM Press revised expanded edition; Rudnick Mabel Dodge Luhan 1984 UNM Press first; Van Deren Coke Taos and Santa Fe 1963 UNM Press first; David Witt The Taos Artists 1984; Udall Modernist Painting in New Mexico 1984 UNM Press first; the Harwood Museum exhibition catalogues from the 1990s–2010s with individual-member focus; the Couse-Sharp Historic Site monograph series; individual-member exhibition catalogues from the Stark Museum, the Anschutz Collection, and the Eiteljorg. These trade in the low to mid three-figure range.
Tier 3 working-library targets. Subsequent printings of all the above; Robertson and Nestor Artists of the Canyons and Caminos (1976 first or 2006 revised); the various coffee-table Taos art books from the 1980s–2000s; Moore The Enchanted Desert 1996; exhibition catalogues from smaller regional institutions; Gerald Peters Gallery and Nedra Matteucci Galleries exhibition catalogues; Western Art Collector magazine compilation issues and Native Peoples magazine TSA features; Coeur d'Alene Art Auction annual catalogues. These trade in the upper two-figure to low three-figure range.
The NMLP intake position
TSA books surface through NMLP intake regularly from three principal donor demographics. Taos and Santa Fe arts-community estates are the deepest concentration, often producing nearly-complete sets of the canonical references plus rarer individual-artist monographs, Mabel Dodge Luhan circle material, gallery-published catalogues from decades of Santa Fe gallery attendance, and Coeur d'Alene Art Auction catalogues accumulated over years of active collecting. Albuquerque UNM-art-history-faculty estates produce the academic core of the literature — the UNM Press scholarship, the Udall and Coke critical studies, the working-curator catalogues from museum exhibitions across decades — plus Kenneth Adams material from Adams's long Albuquerque residency and UNM teaching career. Western American art collector estates from across the state produce mixed holdings that combine TSA references with broader Western art literature.
Standard NMLP intake terms apply: any condition, any quantity, free statewide pickup, no minimum, no tax receipt (NMLP is for-profit). Tier 1 trophy material routes to SellBooksABQ for cash purchase or to specialist Western American art dealers (Coeur d'Alene Art Auction, Heritage Western Art, Bonhams Western Art) when the volume justifies. Tier 2 and Tier 3 material flows through the standard NMLP hand-sort and routing. Material with documented TSA-related provenance (collector bookplates from named Taos collections, exhibition acquisition labels, signed copies from artists' surviving family members, Harwood Museum or Couse-Sharp Historic Site ephemera) is archived through the open NMLP Donation Archive when regionally significant.
The TSA literature is the single most concentrated collecting category in the NMLP Western American art intake stream. No other American regional art colony has generated a comparable volume of published scholarship, and no other category of art-reference books surfaces as consistently from the Taos-Santa Fe-Albuquerque estate-library corridor. For Taos-area estates with TSA art books, gallery catalogues, and the broader Mabel Dodge Luhan circle library accumulation, my Taos estate cleanout service handles the full process from Taos Pueblo south through Ranchos de Taos. If you want cash for a TSA collection rather than donation, my sell books in Taos page covers individual evaluation and pricing. The depth of the canonical literature — from Bickerstaff 1955 through the continuing institutional catalogue programs — means that a serious TSA library can be assembled over time through patient acquisition, and that individual items from the tiered market surface with enough regularity to make condition-driven selection practical.
Cite This Guide
Eldred, J. (May 2026). Collecting Taos Society of Artists Books — Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Biographies & Critical Literature. New Mexico Literacy Project.
https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/taos-society-of-artists-books-collecting
Content is original research by Josh Eldred. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Cite with attribution.