To See The Mountain

Taos Mountain from our room

We did an overnight in Taos. That's all we can ever really do these days, an overnight get away, because of the cat situation at home. Some are old, some are sick, some don't do well on their own. Ms. is entirely devoted to them, but she needs periodic get aways, especially since I've been ill and such a burden. We hit on going to Taos in April partly as a test to see if I could do it, how far I could drive and so on, and partly because the overnight would be scheduled the day after I (finally) got to see the neurosurgeon to see if there is something that can be done about my lameness. Sure there is! More tests!

So. I booked us a Room With a View at the Hacienda del Sol (recommended) but by mistake because I intended to book somewhere else. Well, Ms. says it wasn't a "mistake" at all. She loved it. Well, except for the addled boy thump-thump-thumping for hours upstairs above our room, apparently until he got his ritalin from his parental unit-care giver and wound down. Jeeze. You always hope that doesn't happen, but more often than not, there's a screaming toddler on your flight, a crazed boy or girl screaming and running around while you're trying to sleep or meditate -- or worse, work. Or like us, a somewhat disturbed boy and a hopeless parental unit-care giver thumping around for hours in the room above. Is it somehow inevitable? Seems so.

But you know what? We hardly minded. Why bother? If things like this are inevitable these days, there's little point, eh? Our neighbor in the next room was not so easy going, though. After about an hour of thumping above, he went out in the courtyard and yelled "Hey!" at the upstairs people. The thumping stopped for about five minutes then began again. We didn't see or hear what happened after that, but our impression was that the neighbor left not to return.

Sad. But hennyway...

This place was advertised with a view of Taos Mountain you wouldn't believe, and it didn't disappoint. We had a little patio with two chairs and a table to sit and view The Mountain, and there it was, big as life, bigger really, looming as mountains will do, apparently out on the edge of the plain, no city in view. It was magical.

We've stayed at Mabel's House (The Mabel Dodge Lujan House) in Taos before, and our room had a view of The Mountain, but not like this. It was nice, I have nothing negative to say about it (maybe narrow, steep stairs?) but otherwise, it was great. 

This place, Hacienda del Sol, was different and in some ways much nicer. Our room was on the ground floor, yay, had a (non-working) fireplace lit with electric tea lights, a little patio, and a great big bed. No TeeVee, refrigerator, microwave, or other modrun conveniences. Well, except for the Keurig I didn't know how to work. Finally got it to make hot water, tho, and then later after a failure, to make coffee. Noisy and rattle-y. Very odd. But there you go. We still use a copper-bottom percolator on the stove at home! Easy-peasy.

I wanted to take in a couple of exhibits. Buck Dunton paintings at the Harwood, and Gene Kloss's works at the Couse-Sharp Historic Site. I wasn't sure I could physically do it, but you don't know unless you try, right?

And so, that's what I did and not only got through both places in one day, but enjoyed it. Yep. Tired, though, and it was great to just flop down on the bed and look at The Mountain until it was time for dinner.

Dinner. Hm. We decided to try the Love Apple right down the driveway from the Hacienda del Sol, but I couldn't get through to make reservations, so we walked down there (for me a hike) and inquired at the desk. Very nice woman said there wasn't an opening before 8:30p, but if we wanted she would would check for cancellations after 6p and give us a call. I was about to say yes when I saw the sign on the desk "Cash or check only. Thank you!" Now wait. Who carries cash or a checkbook these days? I surely don't. And I may have had $20 or so with me but that was nowhere near enough for dinner. I expected the bill would be well over $100. Hm. I said, "No thanks, we'll look for somewhere else." And so we did.

Across the (very busy) street was the renown Guadalajara Grill. We went there. "Voted The Best Mexican Food in Taos every year since 2015."  Well. I can't say my Chiles Rellenos were the best. They were enormous, stuffed with calabacitas and cheese, but they were soggy with an oddly flavored green chile sauce, and as far as I could tell, the poblanos were raw, not roasted and skinned, and they were tough. 

The plate was a mess with wet refritos and dry and flavorless Spanish rice and a big glop of sour cream in the middle. But ultimately I ate it and was oddly satisfied. Not my favorite, far from the best, but edible and filling and in parts tasty.

She said her beef tacos were excellent, and her beans and rice were very good, too. In fact, the plates looked distinctly different and were pretty obviously prepared by different people. She not only ate all of hers, but ate some of mine! And the chips and salsa we had for starters were outstanding. Fresh, good, filling.

So, that was our dinner, and we got back to our room to look at The Mountain and fall asleep even before sunset. The boy and its care giver(s) didn't arrive to go thump-thump-thumping upstairs until after dark and we were sleeping. The thumping above woke us up. Oh my. And then it pretty much became part of the background like the rattling and groaning of the baseboard heating.

At some point, it just faded away altogether. 

In the morning, we went over to the kitchen/dining room for (included) breakfast. Well now. What a treat. Freshly prepared bagel with green chile, egg, and potato pancake, tamale, sausage, fresh orange juice (from a magical juicer machine) and excellent coffee from another magic machine I've never seen before that ground the beans fresh for each cup of very strong brew that I thinned down with hot water at the suggestion of the chef. We made new friends at breakfast, a retired couple who were staying in "Mabel's Salon" -- more about which later -- for four days away from Winter in Wisconsin. Oh where? About ten miles from Ms. Ché's Wisconsin friends whom she's visited a number of times. And turns out, these new friends had lived in Woodland, CA, for years before they retired to Wisconsin and so had been near neighbors (about 25 miles from us when we lived in Sacramento)! Well. Who'd a thunk?

We chatted and enjoyed breakfast together until it was time for them to get ready to go hiking with her sister who lived in the area. They were staying a few more days, so we suggested they go over to Mable's House and take a look around. Turns out where we were staying, Hacienda del Sol, was an expansion of Mabel's first house in Taos, and part of it, where the couple was staying in "Mabel's Salon" was the original house built of adobe in the early 1800's. My, my, my. I'd read she had rented a house in Taos when she first arrived in 1917(?). Then she met Tony at the Pueblo, and one thing led to another, and he suggested she buy acreage bordering Pueblo lands where there was a ramshackle three or four room house that he would fix up for her, soon enough for them, and so she did.

That house became Los Gallos, the present Mabel Dodge Luhan House, twenty some-odd rooms, most available for short or long term stays, the place often booked solid for workshops and conferences. Here's an interesting blog post by the High Road Artist that shows off some of the place.

It's wonderful in its own way, and always includes an excellent breakfast in your stay. Ms. has stayed there more than me, but I've enjoyed my time there, too. It's a special place, but Mabel's original house in Taos, now the Hacienda del Sol, is too. 

Ms. insists it was no "mistake" making our reservations there this time. In fact, she loved it and most likely will return whenever she has the chance.

Why Taos? Welp, it was one of the first places in New Mexico we stopped at and explored way back thirty-forty years ago. I don't remember the year. I do remember it was night, and I wanted to see the D. H. Lawrence "forbidden paintings" at the La Fonda de Taos, and so I pulled up there and went in to see what I could see. I think it cost five dollars to have the man pull the curtain on the Forbidden Paintings and let me look at them for ten minutes or something. It was quite a production. At any rate, at the time I was still smoking and the altitude, 7,000 plus feet, was really getting to me, and I don't think I spent all of five minutes looking at the Paintings before I had to leave. Truthfully, they weren't very good anyway.

And so we drove around Taos for a bit in the dark, making discoveries here and there, particularly arts related, and then headed back to Santa Fe for the night. 

And the urge was to go back to Taos in the daylight and explore some more.

Dennis Hopper was still occupying Mabel's House at the time, I think. Or maybe he'd sold it. As I say, I don't remember the year. It could have been '80s; it could have been '90s. But it was some time back.

Then I stopped smoking (c. 1994) and we could go back to Taos, and I could enjoy it. And have ever since.

I wanted to see the Buck Dunton exhibit at the Harwood this time, and I did, and I wasn't disappointed. I got to see some paintings of his that I'd never seen before, and I came to what may be a fuller understanding of who he was and how his painting technique evolved. Like Gerald Cassidy, Dunton was an illustrator and his works, even as he became more of a fine artist, showed his illustrationist roots. I was particularly taken by his painting titled "My Children," a rather cautionary study of his daughter Vivian on horseback, and his son Ivan looking bored into the foreground. The children are painted in nearly photographic detail while the horses and the sagebrush background/foreground and the children's sweaters are more sketched in his Van Goghish style of varied color parallel lines. 

W. Herbert "Buck" Dunton, "My Children," public domain via Wikimedia Commons

I'm almost certain the children were not posed outdoors in the morning sun in New Mexico to be painted en plein air by Dunton (contrary to Ivan's later assertion as stated in the catalog.) No, I suspect that the children were most likely posed indoors and photographed. They could have even been candid photos. The pictures may or may not have been taken in New Mexico. If Vivian was on a horse, it may have been in New Mexico, but she could just as easily have ridden a horse in New Jersey where she and Ivan lived most of the year with their mother. And given the level of detail in her face but not her clothing, she may not have been on a horse at all.

The poses are not what you would naturally see outdoors, in other words. In my view it is likely that if anyone posed for the painting, it was not his children. The faces are from photographs. The bodies are not -- in my view -- physically proportioned correctly. He may have simply drawn bodies to fit the faces. Or even pasted the faces on other bodies altogether.

Vivian's pose on the horse, twisted around with one hand behind her on the horse's back, is one of Dunton's signature poses that he used again and again for people on horseback. And we see it in many other realist western paintings by many artists. I have the feeling it would have been automatic for Dunton to use it for a portrait of his daughter on horseback -- even though she may never have posed in that position. 

Ivan's body is strangely tilted in a way that seems very unnatural, and he seems to be growing directly out of the sagebrush and tilted perhaps because he was blown by the wind. There is no lower body. He's truncated just below the waist. Poor thing. Again, I think this is a made-up pose from Dunton; there was no boy in the sagebrush painted en plein air at dawn such as Ivan suggested later. More likely, his position and pose were photographic artifacts, probably a candid shot, that cut the boy off at the bottom of the frame.

The background is very sketchy, showing a line of horses, rounded mesas and cliched New Mexico weather including the famous "walking rain" -- that's very real, but you may never encounter it. Brilliant blue highlights are scattered throughout. 

The foreground horses and sagebrush and the childrens' clothing are painted with varicolored parallel lines somewhat like Van Gogh's technique in some of his paintings. It gives an unexpected liveliness to the foreground images. Nevertheless, the images seem studio-bound rather than en plein air. They do represent Dunton's signature technique in his later paintings. His many illustrations for magazines and books, however, look completely different and utilize very different techniques. Dunton's later painting in New Mexico strongly resemble Ernest Blumenschein's New Mexico landscapes and portraits.

Where Dunton differs is with the faces of his children, faces that are almost porcelained in their smoothness. Nothing like the rest of the painting. These faces, I'm almost certain, are painted from photographs. 

The whole composition is somewhat off kilter and disturbing. What is really going on here? 

The story is that Dunton and his wife Nelly were divorced, in part because she didn't want to live in New Mexico where W. Herbert Dunton had become "Buck" and was thoroughly integrated into the local cowboy culture -- well, as much as an artist could be -- and he didn't want to leave. The children went with their mother to New Jersey, returning to New Mexico and Taos to spend summers with their father. Perhaps reluctantly. But I have some questions. The painting was supposedly completed in 1920, the same year as the divorce if I understand correctly. So the childrens' back and forth between New Jersey and New Mexico hadn't started yet... or had it? 

Also, summer in Taos can be quite warm, and these children are bundled up in nearly identical heavy wool sweaters, hardly appropriate wear for a Taos summer morning. More suited to late fall or early winter. 

The children look either bored or unhappy, but why? Could it be because their parents aren't getting along and will soon break up? Seems to make more sense to me than that they had already broken up. 

The painting was hanging at the Harwood, but I first saw it years ago at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, it's usual home. It was striking then. It is striking now. 

The Gene Kloss exhibit at the Couse-Sharp was striking too, and I'll try to get to it in another post. For now, we remember The Mountain.