W. Herbert Dunton

Born on a farm near Augusta, Maine, W. Herbert Dunton became a leading American illustrator and renowned painter in the early art colony of Taos, New Mexico.  His specialty was painting the untamed West before it disappeared.

When he was a youngster, Dunton spent much time roaming the woods and fields around Augusta with a gun and sketch-book, and by the time he was sixteen, he was selling drawings and stories of outdoor life to local newspapers and to the Boston Sunday Globe. At age eighteen, he went to Montana for a lengthy period and sketched big game, and from that time, frequently returned West, often working as a ranch hand. He also went to Oregon and Old Mexico where he worked on cattle ranches and collected frontier artifacts. He studied art in Boston at Cowles School and in New York at the Art Students League, and his teacher and fellow Salmagundi Club member Ernest Blumenschein invited him to Taos, New Mexico. In 1912, he opened a summer studio in Taos and settled there in 1921.