Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

In 1918 Gustave Baumann moved to New Mexico (first to Taos and then to Santa Fe). Although he'd lived in the Midwest for most of his life, the warm weather and the spirit of the burgeoning southwesten arts community proved to be powerful lures. The region also provided new visual stimuli--from its grand canyons and cacti to Native American petroglyphs and traditional adobe architecture--while the sun-soaked environment inspired a new supersaturated color sense. It was also there that he married and had his only child, Ann. While Baumann used colorful paintings on paper and griselle drawings as the basis for his woodcuts, no corresponding print has been identified for this work nor is the exact location known. However, Baumann's dog Punch does appear hunting chipmunks under another weeping tree in a woodcut from 1920.