William Penhallow Henderson 1877 - 1943

Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Acquired by the present owners from the above, circa 1990

"William Penhallow Henderson: A Contemporary Appreciation," El Palacio, Magazine of the Musuem of New Mexico, Winter 1987, vol. 93, no. 2, illustrated in color on the cover

Born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1877, William Henderson first visited Santa Fe during his family's failed attempt at a cattle-ranching enterprise in Texas during the 1880s. Ultimately returning to the East Coast, Henderson studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where he won the Paige Traveling Scholarship, allowing him to travel and study in Europe for three years. While in Europe he was struck by the work of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Renoir and Whistler. In 1916, after more than a decade teaching and painting in Chicago at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, Henderson moved to Santa Fe with his wife, poet and editor Alice Corbin. Once in Santa Fe, Henderson, alongside Ernest Blumenschein, Victor Higgins, Walter Ufer and others, founded the New Mexico Painters Society in 1923. With a studio located on the Camino de Monte Sol, Henderson's interest in the Indian and Hispanic residents of the Southwest inspired numerous works in oil and pastel.

Henderson's work is featured in a number of public collections, inluding: the Denver Art Museum, the Hubbell Trading Post and Historical Site, the Johnson Gallery of University of New Mexico, the Museum of New Mexico, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and others.