Guess the Artist

Your clues this week are:

• The artist was American, born on a Midwestern farm towards the end of the 19th century. After spending years in a large metropolitan area, the artist was compelled to move to Northern New Mexico for the same reason so many other artists did: the quality of the sunlight.
• The artist and a friend were founders of a painting group based on a quote by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). WWII put a permanent end to the group, as it temporarily did to many other pleasant pursuits.
• The two pine trees tell us this is an early work. As a long career progressed, the artist shifted to completely nonobjective subject matter.

And


• Cliff dwellings in the American Southwest, like those seen here, were relatively easy to carve because the chosen rock was and is high in soft tuff (compressed volcanic ash). The Puebloan cliff dwellings in Northern New Mexico come from tuff deposited by one of only six supervolcanoes on the planet, and its caldera is "small" (as supervolcano calderas go). The United States can in fact boast(?) that it contains three of the six supervolcanoes. For bonus points: of those three, which one do we especially NOT want to blow its top for fear of Pompeii-izing a big chunk of the Lower 48?

Please email me your guesses over the coming week. I'll post the winner and correct answer with next week's guessing game. Good luck!

Last Week's Answer:

Mary in Moweaqua was the first reader to reassemble the clues last week into the correct answer: Augustus Nicholas Burke (1838-1891), whose 1868 Connemara Girl hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Augustus' oldest brother, Theobald, was the 13th Baronet Burke of Glinsk, a title that became extinct with his death. Another brother, Thomas, was Permanent Under Secretary (essentially the Lt. Governor of Ireland) until the infamous Phoenix Park Murders of 1882.

The island, of course, is Ireland. Connemara, the western half of Co. Galway, is the region that contains the last of the Old Irish goats and the flourishing Connemara pony ... which is one of those "ponies" large enough for polo. Much applause to you, Mary, and many thanks to all who participated!

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