Ernest L. Blumenschein

Ernest Blumenschein was born into a family of German immigrants and raised in Dayton, Ohio. His father was a professional musician and Ernest originally trained as a violinist but decided to pursue the visual arts in his late teens. He studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, then in 1893 transferred to the Art Students League in New York, supporting himself as a musician, and later spent a year at the Académie Julian in Paris. He returned to New York in 1896 and began a career as an illustrator and instructor at the Art Students League. In 1898, on the recommendation of the artist Joseph Sharp, whom he had met in Paris, he traveled to New Mexico with painter Bert Phillips. Blumenschein made a number of subsequent trips to Taos, moving there permanently in 1919. A founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, he brought a modernist style to the group with his palette and techniques.