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| The Crippled Wagon of Fate on the High Road to Taos, 1898 |
(Essay upon attendance at the First "Artists Century" talk at the New Mexico Museum of Art, October, 2013)
La Leyenda....
One day in 1898, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips set out from Denver with a wagon and team of horses. They were highly trained and accomplished fine artists, "easel artists" as they've become known, who went Out West to experience the rough and ready Real World Adventures America still had to offer.
Apparently they were bored in Denver and thought they'd find more inspiration in Mexico. What better way to get there than by wagon and horseback over the spine of the Rockies until they reached the Rio Grande?
Except they never made it to the Rio Grande, never made it to Mexico. Well, of course they would, in time, but on this journey, they didn't.
No, instead, on the high road (such as it was) above Taos, in the wilds of Northern New Mexico, then still a territory of the USofA, a wagon wheel broke, and they were stranded. This is the legend, this is the story, endlessly repeated to this day. Blumenschein is said to have "shouldered" the broken wagon wheel -- though it was tied to the back of one of the horses -- and he humped it the twenty miles or so into the Village of Taos for repairs while Phillips stayed with the broken wagon and had lunch.
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| Bert Phillips having lunch beside the Fateful Wagon, 1898 |
