Customer Reviews

Paintbrushes and Pistols: How the Taos Artists Sold the West

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Paintbrushes and Pistols is the story of an unusual alliance that changed the American West and American art at the turn of the century. It was an alliance between Ernest Blumenschein and other immature, naive men of great artistic talent who became known as the Taos Society of Artists, Fred Harvey, a genius in the field of food and lodging, and the promotion-minded men who operated the Atxhison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad.

Together, they helped to create the westward migration that resulted in the vast cities and smaller towns that exist today. And together, the highly eccentric members of the Taos Society of Artists - the last artists who would devote themselves to capturing the dying West on canvas and in sculpture - radically changed styles of American fine art and commercial illustration.
--- from book's back cover

Having lived in the South West and having a deep love of NM and the Taos School, I can say this is a really great book. It's a great account with excellent background info surrounding the art, times and place these artists lived and painted in. It's very readable and done with a wry humor. Not the least academic, it's an engaging account of one of the great schools of American art.
I highly recommend this book.