Laverne Nelson Black

LAVERNE NELSON BLACK, 1887-1938

Laverne Nelson Black was a latecomer to the Southwest, but he produced many excellent paintings of his adopted region. He had spent his childhood in the Kickapoo River Valley area of Wisconsin, an area that possessed a strong Indian heritage. As the story goes, Black made his ealiest drawings using earth and vegetable colors, including the soft red stone native to the area which the Indians used for ceremonial purposes.

In 1906, Black enrolled in classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts before pursuing a career as a newspaper artist in Chicago, Minneapolis and New York. While in New York, he executed some work on commission, and it is likely that he received some further instruction in the fine arts. Black suffered from ill health and was forced to move with his family to a warmer, drier climate.

In the middle 1920's, he settled in Taos and was immediately drawn to the picturesque subject matter of the region. He painted many works depicting the Indians and their architecture against the backdrop of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Although his works were quite capable, he seems to have received very little recognition in his lifetime, and apparently lived a hand-to-mouth existence. The Depression hit Black particularly hard, and when his health troubled him more, he moved to Phoenix.

There he received a series of commissions from the Santa Fe Railway and worked on an important mural project with Oscar Berninghaus in the Phoenix Post Office.

The fact that Black received so little support for his work while in Taos is surprising, since his paintings are often very well executed and highly evocative of the light and color of the Southwest.

Source: Altermann Galleries and Auctioneers, I: The American West: Legendary Artists of the Frontier, Dr. Rick Stewart, Hawthorne Publishing Company, 1986