An Artistic and Commemorative Journey through the West:

Arthur Wesley Dow‟s Images of Arizona and New Mexico

Although Arthur Wesley Dow is best known as a teacher and New England landscape

painter, one of the most intriguing aspects of his oeuvre demonstrates interests that stray far from

his devotion to art education and his hometown of Ipswich, Massachusetts. Dow was in fact a

frequent traveler, and his series of paintings and photographs from his trip to Arizona and New

Mexico beginning in November 1911 exemplify his adventurous spirit.1 He traveled throughout

the world early in his career – to Japan, India, Greece, and Africa, among other places – and

eventually to the Southwest when he was an established artist in his fifties (Fig. 1). He may have

been intrigued by an image of the American West as heroic and dramatic – adjectives frequently

used to describe the region. Dow may have also been fascinated by the announcement of the

close of the frontier as declared by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 and the period of nostalgia

that followed. Although these ideas encouraged many artists to visit the West in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Dow seems to have been lured by something much

more complex. His trip to the Southwest, including the Grand Canyon and several pueblos in

Arizona and New Mexico, also seems somewhat different from his other travels, both in terms of

his intentions and his level of enthusiasm, and this is clearly expressed in his writings and in his

art.

Although Dow wrote little about his experiences in the West, what information he did

provide offers significant clues as to the goals and intentions of his visit. The only published

documentation of his thoughts is found in the forward to the catalogue for the exhibition of his

1 Dow visited the West three times in his life: fall 1911-winter 1912, 1917 and 1919. On his first trip he went to

Toronto, Chicago, and California in addition to Arizona and New Mexico.

2

Grand Canyon paintings at the Montross Gallery in New York in 1913.2 The first few lines are

significant: “You asked what attracted me most to the Grand Canyon so far from my New

England marshes. Color, first of all – color, „burning bright‟ or smoldering under ash-grays.

Then, line – for the color lies in rhythmic ranges, pile on pile, a geologic Babylon. . . . At sunset

the „temples‟ are flaming red-orange – glorified like the Egyptian god in his sanctuary.”3 Dow‟s

interest in line and color are well known and therefore unsurprising, but his interest in religion

and geology that is clearly expressed in this statement is not as well documented and offers

additional insight into the purpose of his western journey.

Dow‟s foreword is a valuable source regarding his trip to the Southwest, but his art from

this period offers more substantial information. His photographs focus on either the Grand

Canyon, or Native Americans and their pueblos – revealing his interest in geology and

anthropology. In Grand Canyon, Shadow on Canyon Floor from 1911, the small trees on top of

the cliff to the left provide a sense of scale, thereby suggesting the power of the place (Fig. 2).

Dow celebrated the depth and overwhelming presence of the Grand Canyon in his paintings as

well. In The Destroyer from 1911-13, for example, he wanted the viewer to be astounded by the

power of the canyon that he experienced firsthand (Fig. 3). He did this in part by emphasizing

the shadows covering the cliff walls that indicate a powerful looming presence. The river – the

yellow “destroyer” that formed the canyon – is another point of focus. It narrows as it moves

into the distance and points to the bright orange cliffs above. The intensity of these ancient rock

forms encourage contemplation and the top most peak points to the heavens and serves as a

reminder of the true creator of the chasm below.

2 The Montross Gallery, located on Fifth Avenue in New York City, exhibited Dow‟s seventeen Grand Canyon

paintings from April 7th

to April 19th

. 3 Arthur Wesley Dow, foreword to The Color of the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Exhibition of Pictures by Arthur

Wesley Dow. April 7th

to April 19th

, 1913 (New York: Montross Gallery, 1913), n.p.

3

While Dow‟s love of travelling offers a superficial explanation for his trip to the

Southwest, the true motive behind his journey is evident in his relationship with the ethnologist

Frank Hamilton Cushing, known for his expedition to the Zuni Pueblo, and his knowledge of the

Grand Canyon explorer Major John Wesley Powell. Although their career paths and

personalities differed, all three men were fascinated by the Southwest, including its history,

geological formations, native inhabitants, and spiritual and religious qualities. In fact, Dow‟s

decision to go to New Mexico and Arizona in order to make contact with Native Americans and

paint the landscape of the region can be explained by the goals he shared with Cushing and

Powell, and the failure of these two men to reach them.

Years after Cushing and Powell had both died, Dow spent months in the Southwest in an

effort to meet the people of the region, explore the landscape, and fulfill the missions of these

two late-nineteenth-century explorers he so greatly admired. Dow hoped to follow in their

footsteps, complete what they could not, and in the process help to develop a new modern

American art. While he was not trained as an ethnologist and never lived among Native

Americans for an extended period of time as Cushing and Powell did, Dow contributed to the

mission the only way he knew how – not by collecting objects or studying native linguistics, but

by documenting the region through his art. Like Cushing and Powell, Dow studied the “record

of the world‟s beginning” through its people and its land.4 All three men intended to use their

studies as a way to offer a better understanding of the world and the interconnectedness of

mankind.

Despite the many similarities between Dow and Cushing, the details of their relationship

remain unclear. Nevertheless, it has been widely confirmed that the two men were friends and

that the ethnologist had a profound influence on the artist‟s artistic methods. Sylvester Baxter, a

4 Dow, foreword to The Color of the Grand Canyon of Arizona, n.p.

4

journalist who accompanied Cushing on many of his expeditions, claimed that Dow and Cushing

were good friends.5 Frederick Moffat, one of Dow‟s biographers, believed that the two men met

when Cushing went to Ipswich to do excavations of a Native American spring.6 Regardless of

how they met and the closeness of their relationship, it is certain that Dow would never have

been able to ignore the media frenzy surrounding Cushing in the late nineteenth century when

articles by and about him proliferated in many of the nation‟s most widely read journals.7

John Wesley Powell, the head of the Bureau of Ethnology at the time of Cushing‟s

expedition to Zuni, was also a great American soldier and explorer, and another significant

influence on Dow‟s life and art. Although Dow never met him, Powell‟s writings would have

been a significant source for an artist planning to head to the Southwest. Powell is best known

for his expeditions to the Grand Canyon, and he also contributed significant ethnological theories

and studies of Native Americans. His “comprehension of [the Grand Canyon‟s] origins and

characteristics was geological, geographical, and also practical and philosophical, theological

and theoretical.”8 Powell‟s interests, therefore, paralleled those of both Cushing and Dow.

Dow‟s connection to Cushing and Powell is largely based on their common interest in

history. All three men studied the history of the world, either through its land, art, or people. In

Dow‟s case he focused on all three, and in this way he strove to complete the journeys of his

fellow adventurers while at the same time pursuing his own artistic goals. Dow‟s interest in

understanding the world through an exploration of the past is evident even in his young

adulthood when he drew the historic houses of Ipswich and participated in the organization of

5 Sylvester Baxter, “Handicraft, and its Extension, at Ipswich,” Handicraft 1 (February 1903): 254.

6 Frederick Moffatt, “The Life, Art and Times of Arthur Wesley Dow,” PhD diss. (The University of Chicago,

1972), 205. 7 In that year alone three articles by Cushing and two articles by Baxter about Cushing appeared in Popular Science

Monthly, Atlantic Monthly, Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, and Harper‟s. 8 Joni Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press,

1992), 107.

5

the Ipswich Historical Society.9 His desire to study, record, and preserve the past is apparent in

photographs from his Grand Canyon trip as well. In Laguna with Train from 1911, Dow

captured the Laguna Pueblo in the middle ground – silent and still and seemingly preserved for

all time (Fig. 4). However, the cloudy sky suggests that the future of the pueblo may not be so

peaceful. Layers of technology, in the form of a train passing through on the right and telegraph

wires, form a barrier to the village and confirm that Native American traditions may not be

preserved for much longer. Dow conveyed nostalgia for the past and a desire to document the

history of the Laguna before it disappeared, as Cushing did with the Zuni decades earlier.

This fascination with the past is also evident in Dow‟s curiosity regarding the geological

formations he encountered on his trip to the Southwest, an interest that paralleled that of Powell

who spent years working as a professor of geology in Illinois and exploring the arid Southwest

before serving as the second director of the United States Geological Survey. Powell was a

prolific writer and the ideas and discoveries he formed on his many trips would have been

readily available to Dow. In his The Exploration of The Colorado River and Its Canyons, the

major wrote about the “interesting geologic records” he saw while climbing in the Grand Canyon

on one of his expeditions, and explained that “the book is open and I can read as I run.”10

Dow

also wrote about his attempts to “read” the history of the world through the canyon by looking to

“the dust of a million years” that covers its steep walls.11

His attentiveness to the canyon‟s

unique features is evident in the many sketches and notes he made on his trip, and one reviewer

of the Montross Gallery exhibition even found it disconcerting to see “the too methodical manner

9 For information regarding these early drawings, see Arthur Warren Johnson, Arthur Wesley Dow, Historian,

Artist, Teacher (Ipswich, Mass.: Ipswich Historical Society, 1934), 7. 10

John Wesley Powell, The Exploration of The Colorado River and Its Canyons (1895; repr., New York: Dover,

1961), 263. 11

Dow, foreword to The Color of the Grand Canyon of Arizona, n.p.

6

in which the artist has expressed his colossal strata of tone” (Fig. 5).12

Both Dow and Powell

believed that they could learn from nature, and that the secrets of the past – and possibly even

those of the future – were evident in the earth‟s physical matter.

As revealed by his many photographs of Native Americans and their pueblos, Dow‟s

interest in the Southwest was clearly also connected to his fascination with different cultures.13

His photographs reveal that most of his time in the region was spent in the Laguna Pueblo in

New Mexico, and – following in the footsteps of Cushing – in Zuni Pueblo (Fig. 6). To Dow,

looking to less familiar cultures was a way to obtain a greater understanding of the world and a

way to improve and develop artistic theories and practices, and he soon realized that an

appreciation of different cultures could also help students break free from convention.14

Dow

encouraged artists to familiarize themselves with the art of “mound builders, cliff dwellers,

pueblo tribes, Alaskans, Aztecs, Mayans, and Peruvians,” insisting that “we shall find in their

design a source of fresh impulses for designing in line and in color, for carving and modeling;

and these will do their part toward expressing American life through a distinctively American

art.”15

Dow clearly felt that his exploration of the Southwest was especially meaningful for the

potential influence it could have on the development of a new native art.

Dow‟s connection to Cushing and Powell is also evident in their shared religious and

spiritual concerns. Literature on the Southwest from the period, especially on the Grand Canyon,

reflects these concerns in that it often incorporates language that evokes the sublime and the

biblical.16

Even the names of the canyon‟s peaks and cliffs, such as Western Temple of the

12

“Paintings by Henry O. Tanner and Arthur Wesley Dow,” New York Tribune, April 13, 1913. 13

Dow‟s interest in other cultures fully developed under the guidance of Ernest Fenollosa, the director of the

Japanese department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 14

Dow, “Modernism in Art,” The American Magazine of Art 8 (January 1917): 114. 15

Dow, “Designs from Primitive American Motifs,” Teachers College Record 16 (March 1915): 34. 16

C. A. Higgins used such language by referring to the Grand Canyon as “an inferno, swathed in soft celestial fires;

a whole chaotic under-world, just emptied of primeval floods and waiting for a new creative word . . . a boding,

7

Virgin, Point Sublime, and Shiva‟s Temple, immediately reveal the spiritual quality of the place.

This element of the sublime inherent in the Grand Canyon would have appealed to Dow who had

a strong devotion to religion throughout his life. As a young man he translated the meditations

of the seventeenth-century mystic Madame Guyon and he was a frequent visitor of a spiritual

retreat in Eliot, Maine. Dow connected these experiences with his artistic career; he believed

that art had a strong spiritual presence. In a lecture in Richmond, Virginia he referred to art as

the “expression of the highest form of human energy, the creative power which is nearest the

divine.”17

Dow later became interested in the sacred aspects of early designs from the Americas,

such as the swastika and Yucatan hieroglyphs (Fig. 7).18

His interest in these symbols came

from Cushing who wrote about them in “Observations Relative to the Origin of the Fylfot or

Swastika,” an essay that Dow owned and clearly read with great interest.19

Like Dow, Cushing believed that a spiritual presence permeated through many aspects of

life – uniting art, land, and civilizations. He insisted, therefore, that it was essential to research

the religious aspects of the cultures he studied in order to develop a full understanding of their

lives. During his stay at the Zuni Pueblo Cushing spent the majority of his time recording their

creation stories and writing about their sacred dances. His initiation into the Bow Priesthood in

September 1881 gave him access to religious ideas and ceremonies that he would have otherwise

been barred from and he eventually published the information he collected in books such as The

Mythic World of the Zuñi.

terrible thing, unflinchingly real, yet spectral as a dream.” Higgins, “The Titan of Chasms,” Titan of Chasms: The

Grand Canyon of Arizona (Chicago: Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company, Passenger Department,

1910), 5. 17

Johnson, 87-88. 18

Dow wrote about these designs in “Designs from Primitive American Motifs,” 32. 19

This essay is among Dow‟s papers which are now in the collection of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

See Dow, “Arthur Wesley Dow Papers, circa 1826-1978,” Series 4: Printed Material, Box 1, Folder 29, Collections

online, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/dowarth/ (accessed

February 25, 2010).

8

Powell was fascinated by the spiritual and religious aspects of the people and land he

studied as well. This is especially evident in the biblical language that he used to discuss the

geological formations he encountered on his Grand Canyon expeditions. This language became

a powerful tool that helped Powell explain the intensity of the chasm and the divine presence

inherent within its colorful crags and peaks. In a report from 1869 he wrote that “the thought

grew into my mind that the cañons of this region would be a Book of Revelations in the rock-

leaved Bible of geology. The thought fructified, and I determined to read the book; so I sought

for all the available information with regard to the cañon land.”20

As with Dow and Cushing,

Powell‟s fascination with the Southwest connected to something far loftier than his immediate

professional goals and he was directly inspired by the people and land that make the region

unique.

One final similarity between Dow, Cushing, and Powell is that they all went against

tradition. In fact, Dow‟s most significant connection to Cushing and Powell may have been

through his ability to empathize with their atypical methods or theories and the lack of support

they received for them. Dow had to deal with this same lack of support; his outsider status is

evident in the poor reviews he received for his show at the Montross Gallery, and he told his

student Max Weber that the director of the Fine Arts Department of Pratt Institute thought of

them as the “two outstanding disgraces” of the institution.21

Powell faced this same negativity. After exploring the Southwest and turning his interest

temporarily away from geology and anthropology to agriculture and land use, he wrote his

Report on the Lands of the Arid Region in which he pointed out the uniqueness of the West and

20

From Powell‟s report in Bell‟s New Tracks in North America (London: Chapman and Hall, 1870), Appendix D,

559, quoted in Kinsey, 111. 21

For negative reviews, see for example, “Paintings by Henry O. Tanner and Arthur Wesley Dow,” New York

Tribune. Dow made the comment to Weber in 1917, quoted in Nancy E. Green, et. al., Arthur Wesley Dow: His Art

and His Influence, exh. cat. (New York: Spanierman Gallery, 1999), 36, footnote 39.

9

made several recommendations regarding the division of land and water in the region. Powell

called for the land to be divided into “irrigation districts” that shared a common water supply and

for people to work together as a community.22

Unfortunately, his ideas clashed with America‟s

insistence on individual ownership and government assistance and were largely ignored by the

public and by Congress, eventually resulting in problems such as the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

Although the lack of support for Powell‟s ideas caused traumatic national consequences,

Cushing received the most scathing criticism by far. He was accused of spreading untruths about

his time with the Zuni, writing lies in his article, “The Nation of the Willows,” and fabricating

his own “authentic” Native American artifacts.23

A combination of these incidents and criticisms

led to Cushing‟s removal from his Zuni post in 1884, a disappointment only intensified by his

inability to write a report of his experiences or complete the extensive monographs he planned to

write that would expand on his many articles.24

While many people expressed their

disappointment in Cushing‟s failures, no one was more devastated than Cushing himself. In a

letter he wrote the month before his departure back to Washington, he explained the true

importance of his years of research: “I have learned that no one of our great Indian troubles but

could have been averted, had we better understood the natures of the people we have so

unwittedly and invariably made our enemies.”25

Since Cushing never completed his work, it was

important for Dow to journey to the Southwest to continue to document the Zuni and other

22

For more on his ideas in this report, see William deBuys, ed., Seeing Things Whole: The Essential John Wesley

Powell (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2001), 149-208. The report was first published as Powell, Report on the

Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah, Forty-Fifth

Congress, Second Session, H.R. Exec. Document 73. 23

These criticisms are discussed in a letter from W. Matthews to the editor of the Topeka Capital, in Jesse Green,

ed., Cushing at Zuni: The Correspondence and Journals of Frank Hamilton Cushing, 1879-1884 (Albuquerque:

University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 26, 272-3. 24

These were never completed due to Cushing‟s writer‟s block and poor health. Ibid., 26. 25

Cushing, letter from March 16, 1884, quoted in Ibid., 319.

10

Native American tribes and to encourage a better understanding of their culture through

depictions of their villages and the land around them.

Although Cushing‟s expeditions were considered unscientific and unsuccessful and

Powell‟s theories were widely condemned, Dow‟s journey was meant to honor them and

demonstrate the significance of their work. It is clear that Dow was drawn to Cushing and

Powell, including their writings, theories, and discoveries, and that he hoped to carry on in their

footsteps. An interest in history, geology, different cultures, and religion drew them all to the

Grand Canyon and the pueblos of the Southwest – Dow to consider the land and its people and

what it all meant to two of the region‟s greatest explorers, Cushing to explore the history of the

Zuni, and Powell to learn about the land and its people and the future of the region. Since

neither Cushing nor Powell completed their goals to their satisfaction, and were left

underappreciated at the end of their careers, Dow felt it was up to him to finish what they had

started. Through his paintings and photographs created in a modern aesthetic, he offered a

pictorial equivalent of their research and ushered their ideas into the twentieth century.

Although the reviews of Dow‟s Grand Canyon paintings were disappointing and he too

was often misunderstood, he brought his ideas from the Southwest back to New York in an

attempt to educate the East about the West, just as Cushing and Powell had done before him.

Although he could not complete Cushing‟s project in the way the anthropologist would have

done, or convince the public about the validity of Powell‟s ideas, Dow was successful at

spreading the importance of the Southwest to his students. He imparted his interest in Native

American design and his love of the brilliant colors of the Grand Canyon. In this way, the work

of Cushing and Powell lived on, not just through Dow, but through Max Weber, Georgia

O‟Keeffe, and other members of the New York avant-garde.

11

Bibliography

Baxter, Sylvester. “Handicraft, and its Extension, at Ipswich.” Handicraft 1 (February 1903):

249-268.

Cushing, Frank Hamilton. The Mythic World of the Zuñi. Edited by Barton Wright.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.

deBuys, William, ed. Seeing Things Whole: The Essential John Wesley Powell. Washington,

D.C.: Island Press, 2001.

Dow, Arthur Wesley. “Arthur Wesley Dow Papers, circa 1826-1978.” Collections online,

Smithsonian Archives of American Art. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/dowarth/

(accessed February 25, 2010).

________. “Designs from Primitive American Motifs.” Teachers College Record 16 (March

1915): 29-34.

________. Foreword to The Color of the Grand Canyon of Arizona. Exhibition of Pictures by

Arthur Wesley Dow. April 7th

to April 19th

, 1913. New York: Montross Gallery, 1913.

________. “Modernism in Art.” The American Magazine of Art 8 (January 1917): 113-116.

Green, Jesse, ed. Cushing at Zuni: The Correspondence and Journals of Frank Hamilton

Cushing, 1879-1884. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990.

Green, Nancy E., et al. Arthur Wesley Dow: His Art and Influence, exh. cat. New York:

Spanierman Gallery, 1999.

Higgins, C. A. “The Titan of Chasms.” In Titan of Chasms: The Grand Canyon of Arizona, 3-10.

Chicago: Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company, Passenger Department,

1910.

Johnson, Arthur Warren. Arthur Wesley Dow, Historian, Artist, Teacher. Ipswich, Mass.:

Ipswich Historical Society, 1934.

Kinsey, Joni. Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West. Washington:

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

Moffatt, Frederick C. “The Life, Art and Times of Arthur Wesley Dow.” PhD diss., The

University of Chicago, 1972.

“Paintings by Henry O. Tanner and Arthur Wesley Dow.” New York Tribune, April 13, 1913.

Powell, John Wesley. The Exploration of The Colorado River and Its Canyons. 1895. Reprint,

New York: Dover, 1961.

12

Fig. 1. Arthur Wesley Dow, Arthur and Fig. 2. Arthur Wesley Dow, Grand Canyon, Shadow Minnie Dow at the Grand Canyon, 1919. on Canyon Floor, 1911, silver print.

Fig. 3. Arthur Wesley Dow, The Destroyer, Fig. 4. Arthur Wesley Dow, Laguna with Train, 1911, 1911-13, oil on canvas. silver print.

13

Fig. 5. Arthur Wesley Dow, Yavapai Sunset, 1912, pencil drawing from sketchbook. Ipswich Historical Society, Massachusetts.

Fig. 6. Arthur Wesley Dow, Zuñi – On the Roofs, 1911,

silver print.

Fig. 7. Design from the swastika (left) and variations of Yucatan hieroglyphs (right),

illustrated in Dow’s article, “Designs from Primitive American Motifs.”