Albert Herman Schmidt, “Sumac,” Oil on Canvas, 1910

Painting

Soft blues make up the background of this painting; the pale clouded sky giving way to a blue-green haze hanging over the valley. On the left of the painting, the hillside above the valley slopes down and to the right. The vegetation is mostly yellowish brown. There are some small green trees, the very top leaves turning yellow. Yellow shrubs grow among the trees. The whole area, especially the foreground, is accented with bright red sumac leaves. This painting is thought to be one of Schmidt’s earlier works.

17 x 20 1/2″

(1883-1957)

Albert Herman Schmidt was born in Chicago. He studied painting at the Art Institute with Charles Francis Browne and J. H. Vanderpoel. Schmidt is believed to have first visited the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony as a student of Browne. Later he studied in Paris at the Julian Academy. He joined the Chicago Society of Artists and won several awards for pieces he exhibited in the Society of Western Artists. Locally, he was a friend of the Van Inwegin family whose home on the west side of the river adjoined Stronghold on the south. The family maintained a close relationship with the Eagle’s Nest Camp, visiting back and forth across the river by boat. By the 1920s, he was living in the southwest, where he was an early Santa Fe art colony member.

If you look around the gallery, you will see several Schmidt paintings. His work is also featured in the Albuquerque Museum, the Museum of New Mexico, the American Embassy at the Vatican, and at the Embassy in Prague.