Fremont F. Ellis

Born in Virginia City, Montana, Fremont Ellis earned a reputation as a New Mexico painter of site-specific landscapes that conveyed his intense feelings for the rich coloration of the Southwest.  He was much influenced by American Impressionism and was one of the few newcomer artists of Santa Fe who had been born in the West.

His family had gone to Montana during the Gold Rush and the family traveled all over the county, and the future artist spent much time in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. He briefly attended the Art Students League, but decided to return West to the landscape he loved. He first went to El Paso, Texas, where he taught art and then in Santa Fe joined his friends Willard Nash, Jozef Bakos, Will Shuster, and Walter Mruk. Together they formed the Los Cinco Pintores, modernist-tending artists who had their first of several exhibitions in the Museum of Santa Fe in 1921.