Navajo Yeibichai Dancers Sand Painting on Board, Unsigned

A horizontal sand painting on board depicting a procession of Yeibichai dancers, the masked Holy People figures central to the Navajo Nightway ceremony. Reading left to right, the composition opens with Talking God (Haashchʼééłtiʼí), identifiable by the white fan-shaped headdress of eagle tail feathers and the white deerskin robe, carrying a fawnskin medicine pouch. He is followed by an alternating line of male and female dancers — the males in kilts with bare legs and moccasins, the females in long buckskin skirts — each holding a gourd rattle and sprig of evergreen, with long blue prayer-stick streamers trailing from their masks. The procession closes with Water Sprinkler (Tó Neinilí), the clown figure, identified by the bow and the heavy garlands of spruce at neck, wrists, and knees.

Executed in natural pigmented sands — ochre, sienna, charcoal, ivory, and sage green — laid directly onto a Masonite-type board with the warm terracotta ground left exposed as the field. Sand paintings in this commercial, permanent format emerged from the Shiprock and Farmington area mid-20th century onward, when Navajo artists adapted ceremonial iconography into fixed-media works for the collector market. The figures' rendering — stylized geometry, careful symmetry, fine detail in the headdress feathers and beaded yokes — is consistent with the work of skilled Navajo sand painters working from the 1960s through the 1980s. No visible signature was located on the face; the verso is unmarked.

CONDITION

Good. A couple of minor scuffs to the sand surface along the lower edge and corners, with light loss to the black ground-line border in places. The figures themselves are intact with no significant pigment loss. Edges of the board show light handling wear. Unframed.

DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS

• Overall: 16" H × 48" W × 1/4" D
• Medium: Natural sand on board
• Subject: Yeibichai (Nightway) dancers
• Verso: Unmarked
• Frame: Unframed