Aaron Bastian
Director
Lot 73
Laverne Nelson Black(1887-1938)Apache at Watering Hole 31 1/2 x 41 1/2 in. framed 38 x 48 in.
1 November 2022, 10:00 PDT
Los AngelesSold for US$101,175 inc. premium
Looking for a similar item?
Our Western Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistAsk about this lot
Laverne Nelson Black (1887-1938)
Apache at Watering Hole
signed 'LaVerne Nelson Black' (lower right)
oil on canvas
31 1/2 x 41 1/2 in.
framed 38 x 48 in.
signed 'LaVerne Nelson Black' (lower right)
oil on canvas
31 1/2 x 41 1/2 in.
framed 38 x 48 in.
Footnotes
Provenance
Burlington Northern Santa Fe, LLC, Fort Worth, Texas.
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1997.
LaVerne Nelson Black was raised in Wisconsin's Kickapoo Valley, and in his adolescence had many friends from the nearby reservation. At age 19, Black moved to Chicago, where he enrolled at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts earning a merit scholarship for his second year. Upon graduation, Black worked as a commercial artist for Chicago-area and New York newspapers while also receiving fine art commissions and producing his own work.
Health issues led the artist to move to Taos, New Mexico in the 1920s where his work changed to focus on the local Pueblo Indians, adobe architecture and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. A few years later, Black moved again to Phoenix, Arizona looking for a warmer climate. At the height of his career in this 1930s period, Black was an in-demand artist and received Santa Fe Railway art commissions along with exhibiting his work. Tragically, in 1937 Black may have contracted paint poisoning while working on a four mural commission for the Public Works Administration at a post office in Phoenix and died a few months later, at age fifty-one.
As with the present composition, Black's best paintings are characterized by bold palettes and the use of confident, broad brushwork. Often he also incorporated palette knife into his painted surfaces. In Apache at Watering Hole, Black presents two central figures and their horses in a saturated Southwestern landscape. A bright orange sky contrasts dramatically with deep blue distant mountains, while the figures are set against a spicy brown-orange scrubby Southwestern landscape. Elements of the figural group, particularly the touches of white on the horses and the jacket of the sitting figure, and the blue shirt and head wrap on the standing figure, are sun glaringly striking against the background coloration. The figures and horse are rendered in a thoroughly modernist style, with enough detail to identify their tribal affiliation, and are beautifully contrasted with the painterly reflection of the foreground watering hole.
Apache at Watering Hole is an exceptional example of the artist's Southwestern mature period, showcasing Black's heightened sense of design, color relationships and composition as well as his exceptional draftsmanship in the forms of the horses and figures.