Dennis Haggerty Taos New Mexico Landscape Watercolor 1978, Signed

A Taos valley landscape in watercolor and charcoal on paper by Dennis Edward Haggerty (American, 1947–2012), composed from a high vantage with the horizon pressed hard against the upper edge — patchwork irrigated fields, pale chalk fallows, and a distant mesa rising beneath a saturated cobalt sky. The geometry is built first in a heavy charcoal armature, then filled with washes of sage, ochre, and dusty pink, the marks reading as both cultivated rows and pure graphic rhythm. This is drawing-forward modernism in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts tradition, applied to the high desert. Signed and dated in pencil at lower right: Dennis Haggerty / 1978. Presented under glass in a cream mat and gilt wood frame.

Painted six years into Haggerty's annual Taos summers, the work belongs to the formative period when the structural discipline of his draftsmanship was still fully visible inside the color. The composition sits within a clear Taos modernist lineage — Andrew Dasburg's abstracted patchwork valleys as the most direct antecedent, with John Marin and Marsden Hartley further upstream. At 18 × 23 inches sight, the sheet is well beyond the scale of Haggerty's typical auction material, most of which is intimate. Large, fully resolved Taos compositions from his early period are uncommon on the secondary market and offer accessible entry into the Taos modernist tradition at a fraction of the price now commanded by his sources.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Dennis Edward Haggerty (American, 1947–2012) is best known for his colorful, abstract landscapes of Taos and Northern New Mexico, a body of work he developed across four decades of summers in the region. Born in Philadelphia and trained at West Chester University and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Haggerty first traveled to Taos in 1972 and returned every summer for the rest of his life, becoming a familiar part-time member of the Taos arts community. The 1978 date of this work places it within his formative Taos period.

Working primarily in watercolor, gouache, oil, and acrylic on paper, Haggerty translated the high desert into bold color fields and graphic linework — patchwork valleys, distant mesas, and the saturated cobalt sky of Northern New Mexico. His subjects ranged from large-scale landscapes to intimate hand-painted mail art envelopes sent to friends in Taos, a small but coveted area of his market. Outside the painting season, he taught art for 39 years at West Chester Friends School in Pennsylvania.

Haggerty's work has sold through Santa Fe Art Auction, William Bunch Auctions, Sarasota Estate Auction, Lion and Unicorn, and A. Kleins, with a current auction record of $3,250 set at William Bunch in 2024. He died in Pennsylvania on July 24, 2012; the Taos News marked his passing in tribute.

Condition:
Good, Wear to Frame

Size:
Overall: 25" X 30.5"
Visible: 18" X 23"