Leon Gaspard (1882 – 1964)

Gaspard was the son of a retired Russian army officer who took him along as a boy on fur trading trips to Siberia. In Vitebsk he became the pupil of Julius Penn, along with Marc Chagall, a most important Post-Impressionist artist. Gaspard also studied in Odessa and Moscow before going to Paris at 17 for study at the Julien Academy with Edouard Toudouze and Bouguereau, “the supreme academician.” His first one-man show while still a student resulted in the purchase of 35 Paris sketches by a New York collector. Gaspard took his American wife on a two-year horseback honeymoon in Siberia in 1908. The resulting paintings were a Paris success. He was seriously wounded as a French aviator shot down in WWI and moved to New York City in 1916.

When his doctors recommended a warmer climate, he settled in Taos in 1918. Although the established Taos artists received him coldly, except for Dunton, Gaspard found in the Indians and the terrain the basis for commercial success with his “bright palette and freely drawn, loosely painted scenes.” His paintings show “a love of exciting color and highly developed pattern. The intricate fabric of his methods of design are to an extent concealed by the accomplished way in which he preserves the casual immediacy of a sketch, even in large-scale studio work. Gaspard continued to travel extensively and to paint productively until his death.

Resource: SAMUELS’ Encyclopedia of ARTISTS of THE AMERICAN WEST,
Peggy and Harold Samuels, 1985, Castle Publishing