Provenance: Private collection, New York

Literature: Walking With Beauty: The Art and Life of Gerard Curtis Delano, Richard G. Bowman, Denver, CO, 1990: p. 87. The Canyon Dweller is a quintessential work by Gerard Curtis Delano, exhibiting his prominent use of color, the stylized depiction of the figure and the canyon setting amid the near-abstract forms of his landscapes. These images are some of the most iconic works of the Southwest. And they nearly never happened. Throughout much of the 1930s, Delano homesteaded at Cataract Creek in Summit County, Colorado. He lived a primitive life, including cutting his own firewood and hauling water up from the creek in pails. During his leisure time, he painted illustrations and wrote text for his acclaimed series The Story of the West. At the conclusion of that series, which was well received but generated only limited funds, Delano faced a pivotal decision of what to do next. Faced with an unknown future, he went deep into the desert. “Always having had a great interest in Indians, I now drove to New Mexico and Arizona to get firsthand material. First stopping with some of the pueblo tribes, I then visited the Navajo Reservation,” Delano wrote in Walking With Beauty: The Art and Life of Gerard Curtis Delano. “And what I saw there I liked. Here was a beautiful, proud people who, in everyday life, dressed more colorfully than any other tribe of my knowledge. So began my knowledge of, and acquaintance with, the Navajo. As my admiration of these people has grown, so has the number of my material-gathering trips among them. Now, at the apex of my career, I was called the ‘Painter of the Navajo.’”