Portrait of Dieguito Roybal, San Ildefonso Pueblo

Robert Henri’s New Mexican paintings prominently feature the state’s Indigenous peoples. Henri’s paintings embrace the humanity of his subjects by depicting them as named individuals, instead of the ethnographic types common among other painters of the time. Dieguito Roybal was a leader and participant in traditional ceremonies at San Ildefonso Pueblo, and Henri depicts Roybal in the midst of drumming, using a fluid, expressive stroke intended to communicate the artist’s empathetic engagement with his sitter. Henri had been invited to New Mexico by the archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett, who had been recently appointed the director the Art Galleries of the Museum of New Mexico (now the New Mexico Museum of Art). When the Art Galleries opened in November 1917, Henri donated this painting to the growing collection.

American painter Robert Henri contributed significantly to the development and early vision of the New Mexico Museum of Art, particularly in the promotion of contemporary artists and the anti-academic, open-door policy.

Like many artists before him, Henri’s New Mexican paintings prominently feature the state’s Indigenous peoples. Henri’s paintings embrace the humanity of his subjects by depicting them as named individuals, instead of the ethnographic types common among other painters of the time. Dieguito Roybal was a leader and participant in traditional ceremonies at San Ildefonso Pueblo, and Henri depicts Roybal in the midst of drumming, using a fluid, expressive stroke intended to communicate the artist’s empathetic engagement with his sitter.