Walter Ufer

Walter Ufer worked in Taos, New Mexico in the early twentieth century, painting the landscape and native inhabitants of the Southwest in a naturalistic manner. Ufer grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, in a German immigrant family. His father was a gunsmith with a talent for engraving, and he encouraged his son's interest in art. Ufer apprenticed to a commercial lithographer and finished his training in Dresden, Germany, working as a printer and engraver. Deciding to pursue a career as a painter, he enrolled in two art schools there, and later continued his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago and at Smith's Academy, another Chicago art school. He became a teacher at Smith's Academy and worked as a commercial illustrator while establishing himself as a portrait painter. In 1911, Ufer returned to Germany to study in Munich for two years; he also traveled and painted in Paris, Italy, and North Africa.

In 1914, Ufer and fellow Chicago painter Victor Higgins (1884–1949) were encouraged to paint in Taos, New Mexico, by Chicago art supporter Carter Harrison Jr. (1860-1953), who became an important patron. In 1917, Ufer was invited to join the Taos Society of Artists, founded two years earlier to promote the work of artists who depicted the region in a conservative, naturalistic manner. That same year, Ufer settled permanently in Taos. His brightly colored paintings of Native Americans brought him honors and a steady income. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the painter's fortunes fell with those of the art market, and his success was also eroded by chronic alcoholism and indebtedness. Ufer died in poverty at the age of sixty-one.