Snapshot In Time: In 1918, the same year Gustave Baumann created CHURCH-RANCHO DE TAOS in New Mexico, the USS New Mexico, lead ship of a class of three battleships, was commissioned. At the end of World War I, the ship escorted President Woodrow Wilson home from the Versailles Peace Conference. Later she became flagship of the Pacific Fleet.

Art Smart Fact: It was only three years earlier that the relatively unknown Gustave Baumann had stunned the art world by capturing a Gold Medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Virtually every major artist working at the time had entered work in the Exposition's worldwide competition. Printmaking would never be the same after millions of visitors and young artists saw Baumann's extraordinary woodcuts for the very first time.

About The Art: CHURCH RANCHO DE TAOS was one of Gustave Baumann's earliest woodcuts and in retrospect one of his most enduring and popular images. It was completed the same year the artist decided to move his family and studio to New Mexico permanently. Backed against the blue-grey Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the town of Taos is situated on a plateau, cut-through by the Rio Grande River. Taos is also home to one of the longest inhabited sites in North America, the Taos Pueblo. Perhaps the most eloquent description of the region's most famous landmark comes from contemporary artist David Berry who wrote "The Ranchos de Taos Church is an old adobe Spanish Mission church a few miles south from central Taos, New Mexico, and is one of the most painted buildings in the world. While the front is a beautiful example of Spanish Mission architecture, it is the back of the church that is the subject of so many paintings. Void of doors and windows, the leaning and curved lines of the adobe walls provide a simple form of free form shape against a big sky background. The image changes dramatically throughout the day and season. Formally called the The Saint Francis of Assisi Church at Rancho de Taos, the church is made of sun dried mud bricks with a layer of mud stucco. While this style of building is durable in sunshine, during the rainy season it suffers significantly. The annual mudding requires an army of volunteers who apply a new outer layer to the entire church. This gives a secondary theme to the painting: a religion that is constantly being built --- a church as a living architecture dependent on members to continually maintain the physical, community and spiritual structure."

Gustave Baumann is considered by many to be the "best of the best" of any color woodcut artist who ever worked in this difficult medium. Today, original woodcuts by Baumann cost thousands of dollars if and when you can find them. But you don't need to win the lottery to own his work. Just as finely crafted furniture from past eras has been replicated because the original makers are gone, this is a fine reproduction of CHURCH-RANCHO DE TAOS. Indeed, it is one of the best reproductions I have seen in over two decades of selling both original and replicated Baumann woodcuts. It was made using contemporary printing techniques, however you will be very surprised how authentic the signature and hand-in-the-heart chop mark look and how good the colors are.....even the paper has texture. Several of the out-of-print reproductions have gone on to become valuable themselves.