The Gossip

William Penhallow Henderson, born Medford, MA 1877-died Tesuque, NM 1943 · ca. 1922

In The Gossip, William Penhallow Henderson focused on the distinctive shapes of the southwestern landscape. The outlines of the women’s forms echo the swelling hills and rounded Pueblo architecture. Henderson was a noted modernist painter who drew inspiration for his intensely colored canvases from the postimpressionist and cubist styles that he first saw in Paris. The dark values and edgy colors in The Gossip help to evoke the isolation and claustrophobia of communities scattered throughout the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico.