WILLIAM VICTOR HIGGINS (1884-1949)
Pueblo Peak (2,631m - 8,632ft)
United States of America (Oregon / Nevada)
In Taos, New Mexico, 1921, oil on canvas, RISD Museum
The mountain
Pueblo Peak (2,631m - 8,632ft) to Pueblo Mountain is the highest point of the Pueblo Mountains, a remote mountain range in the United States located mostly in southeastern Oregon and partially in northwestern Nevada. Most land in the Pueblo Mountains is managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
While there is no designated wilderness area in the Pueblo Mountains, traveling in the mountains can be very challenging. The Desert Trail runs through the mountains; however, it is not a developed hiking trail. The route is simply marked by rock cairns that serve as guideposts. The cairns were built as a cooperative venture between the Bureau of Land Management, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, and the Desert Trail Association (a private organization). The Desert Trail Association publishes a topographic map for hikers that gives directions for orienteering from cairn to cairn.
Cattle and sheep grazing in the Pueblo Mountains began when the first ranches were established along the eastern edge of the mountains in the mid-1860s.
Miners were among the first to explore the Pueblo Mountains. There are at least 18 locations where mining took place in the past.
Wind power is now being explored in the Pueblo Mountains. The test allowed a private wind energy company to install, operate, and maintain two meteorological poles.
The painter
William Victor Higgins was an American painter and teacher, born at Shelbyville, Indiana. He studied at the Art Institute in Chicago and at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.
In Paris he was a pupil of Robert Henri, René Menard and Lucien Simon, and when he was in Munich he studied with Hans von Hayek. He was an associate of the National Academy of Design. Higgins moved to Taos, New Mexico in 1913 and joined in 1917 the Taos Society of Artists founded two years before by Joseph Henry Sharp, W. Herbert Dunton, Eanger Irving Couse et Oscar Edmund Berninghaus.
In 1923 he founded The Hartwood Foundation with Louise Harwood and Bert Phillips. He then painted a lot of works representing the mountains range surrounding the city of Taos and especially the Pueblo Mountains.
During the Depression, he was commissioned to paint a mural inside the Taos County Courthouse financed by the PWAP, titled Moises, El Legislador.
