Ralph Waldo Emerson Meyers (Michigan / New Mexico, 1885-1948), Native American on horseback, oil on panel, signed lower right

sight: 8 x 9 in., frame: 10 x 12 in.

Provenance: The Estate of Charles “Lucky” Attal (1942-2025), longtime noted Austin antiques and art dealer

Ralph Meyers was a self-taught painter who received no formal artistic training but was strongly influenced by prominent Western artists and frontier personalities during his youth in Denver and through his early visits to the Southwest. After moving to Taos in 1909, he became deeply connected to the region’s Native American communities and local artists, developing a distinctive approach to New Mexican genre and landscape painting; Leon Gaspard regarded him as one of the finest colorists of his period, and he was held in high esteem by Nicolai Fechin and other artists of the Taos colony. Working primarily in oil on canvas, Meyers was best known for his New Mexican landscapes and also photographed the Taos landscape and its Native American people, selling his photographs as postcards. His first exhibition was held at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe in 1917, where his work appeared in a Southwestern art exhibition alongside artists including E. Martin Hennings, Joseph Henry Sharp, Mary Ufer, Walter Ufer, Herbert Dunton, and Victor Higgins.