268 Navajo's at Junction Rock

SOLD
Winning Bid Undisclosed
This item SOLD at 2016 Apr 02 @ 15:06UTC-7 : PDT/MST
Category Art
Auction Currency USD
Start Price 25,000.00 USD
Estimated at 50,000.00 - 75,000.00 USD
Navajo's at Junction Rock
Artist: Payne, EdgarDate of Birth: 1883-1947
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 20 x 24 inches
Signed: Signed lower right
Verso:

A fabulous excerpt from the diary of the original owners of the painting illuminates and precisely places the large rock formation that dominates this exceptional work:
“Monday, August 17, 1925—
...Canyon de Chelly was as lovely as pictures. One rides up the river bed of Chinlee Wash, great sandstone cliffs on both sides, about 800 feet high. We rode upstream in heavy sand about six miles when we came to the big rock, the center of our Payne painting. It stands on the right of Canyon de Chelly, with the canyon leading away to the right around the big rock, while del Muerto leads ahead and away to the left. Our big rock marks the end of the divide, with de Chelly leading off to the right; while on the left almost across from our rock, slightly ahead, was the great rock wall where Curtis took our Indian picture in de Chelly, and del Muerto goes on to [the] left. We turned right around our rock and started up de Chelly...”
Look at the square strokes layered and angled to create the areas bathed in sun and made obscure by shadow, to create the sky, the green slope, the sand. Heat makes a sound in the desert, a high whine that fades to a soft sound of water in the shade. The riders keep to that shade, to that sound, as they move between the Canyons—del Muerto and de Chelly.