Walter Ufer, (1876-1936)

The Washerwoman 25 x 30in framed 31 x 35 1/2in

The Washerwoman
signed 'WUfer' (lower right), signed again and titled twice (on the stretcher bars)
oil on canvas
25 x 30in
framed 31 x 35 1/2in

Provenance
Rita Goldberg, Detroit, Michigan.
Michael Sherline, Phoenix, Arizona, 1973, by family descent.
Private collection, by family descent.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, American Art, December 1, 2004, lot 148.
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Exhibited
Provo, Brigham Young University, Visions of the Southwest from the Diane and Sam Stewart Art Collection, February 11, 2009 - July 3, 2009.
Salt Lake City, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Bierstadt to Warhol: American Indians in the West, February 15 – August 11, 2013.

Walter Ufer was a notable draftsman and colorist celebrated for his honest depictions of the American West. He was born near Cologne, Germany and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. During his formative years, Ufer apprenticed as a printer and engraver. He was inspired to become a painter, however, at the age of seventeen after visiting the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Thereafter he traveled to Germany to study academic realism, training in Hamburg and the Royal Academy in Dresden. Returning stateside in 1900, Ufer worked as an illustrator, printer, portraitist, and art instructor in Chicago, but within a year relocated to Munich in 1911 to further his artistic endeavors. In 1914, Ufer once again found himself in Chicago attracting notice from the city's mayor, Carter Harrison, for his artistic talents.

Ufer was one of three Chicago-based artists (along with Victor Higgins and Ernest Martin Hennings) who were sponsored by the mayor of Chicago to travel to the American Southwest and paint its natural beauty during the summers of 1914 and 1915. The portraits and landscapes from this period were lauded in Chicago and firmly established his career as a Southwestern painter. Taos in particular had captured his imagination and by 1917, Ufer settled there and became an elected member of the Taos Society of Artists.

Mayor Harrison encouraged Ufer to paint the Southwest candidly, espousing that 'The man who makes himself the Millet of the Indian, who paints him just as he is, as he lives, will strike the lasting note.' Historically, European-trained artists portrayed Native Americans in a purely romanticized light, further perpetuating the myth of the 'noble savage.' Ufer broke with that tradition, depicting Southwest Native Americans as they really lived and worked. In 1928, Ufer wrote, 'I paint the Indian as he is. In the garden digging – In the field working – Riding amongst the sage – Meeting his woman in the desert – Angling for trout – In meditation.' 1 Ufer seldom painted images of ceremonial dances or ritual contexts, preferring to represent the material objects of the Pueblo Indians as extensions of their cultural traditions.

In The Washerwoman, Ufer depicts the material culture of pueblo Indians in a scene of everyday life. A woman walks along a seemingly unremarkable dirt path carrying a heavy load, somewhat anonymous to the viewer and the world. Yet within this scene lays a remarkable hidden world of layers, brushwork and color. The impressionistic dabs of blue in the sky give the scene brilliance in the midday sun. The adobe buildings, the eroding wall and road all have an organic movement to them that gives the scene life and dynamism. All at once an ordinary scene of everyday life is anything but ordinary. Ufer's bright palette and distinct brushwork is what elevates him to such fame in the historical genre of Western art. Additionally his respect for the American Indian culture is on full display in this extraordinary painting.

By 1926, Ufer was at the height of his fame. Following several one-man shows and prestigious prizes, he was elected an Academician by the National Academy of Design. Ufer tragically died ten years later, at the age of sixty, from peritonitis. While his popularity has waxed and waned, his importance was acknowledged immediately and his passing lamented. The great American modernist Stuart Davis wrote a tribute to Ufer in the New York Times — 'We honor the memory of a man whose spirit was a living expression of that unflinching honesty and integrity which alone can assure the progress of art in America hand in hand with the other forces on which the hopes of freedom of expression and a higher culture in America depend.' 2

1 Macbeth Gallery, Exhibition of Recent Paintings by Walter Ufer [exh. cat.], New York, 1928, p.1.
2 "Vale," The New York Times, August 16, 1936, p. 7.