Victor Higgins

Indian Girl with Parrot and Hoop, about 1920

oil on canvas

40 x 43 in.

Gift in memory of John P. Frenzel, Sr., by his heirs

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Victor Higgins was born William Victor Higgins in Shelbyville, Indiana.  His inspiration to paint came from an itinerant sign painter.  Higgins studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts before traveling to Europe to continue his studies first at the Académie de la Grand Chaumiere in Paris and then in Munich.  After returning to Chicago Higgins went on a painting trip to Taos, New Mexico. The colorful life that he and his contemporaries found in New Mexico led to the formation of the Taos Society of Artists founded in 1915.  Higgins a member of the group and became a permanent resident of Taos, New Mexico. He primarily concentrated on painting the landscape but also had an established reputation for his striking portrayals of the Native Americans living in Taos.

An example of Victor Higgins’ early style, Indian Girl with Parrot and Hoop exhibits his dramatic use of brilliant color, apparent in the bird’s feathers and girl’s clothes, and his strong sense of composition, exemplified by the hoop that deftly links bird and model on the surface of the picture plane.  The Pueblo people often kept parrots as pets and as a ready source of colored feathers to decorate masks and other ceremonial objects. 

Reference

Rick Stewart.  The American West: Legendary Artists of the Frontier, Portland, OR: Hawthorne Publishing Company, 1986.  ISBN-13: 978-0961723804