Lot 323: Ralph Waldo Emerson Meyers

Ralph Waldo Emerson Meyers New Mexico (1885-1948) RIVER BEND oil on board, framed signed: lower left, Meyer H9 1/2" W12" *Artist biography: Ralph Meyers was a well-known early day Taos Indian trader, forest ranger and painter who, without any training, did some remarkable New Mexican genre and landscape paintings and was, as Leon Gaspard called him, one of the finest colorists of the period; he was, apparently, also held in high esteem by Fechin and other contemporaneous artists of the colony. Meyers grew up in Denver, where he appeared to have been heavily influenced by a number of prominent Western artists and frontier personalities, sufficiently so, that after numerous visits to the Southwest soon after the turn of the century, he moved to Taos in 1909 and took a job as a fire guard on Taos land. He forged enduring friendships with the Indians, and opened a trading post in 1912. His first exhibition was at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe in 1917. Meyers was immortalized as the Indian trader Rodolfo Beyers in Frank Waters' book on early day Taos, "The Man Who Killed the Deer."