THEORDORE VAN SOLEN

When the Fine Arts Museum in Santa Fe opened in 1917 it had a celebration exhibition which included all the Taos and Santa Fe artists. Theodore Van Soelen was one of the many artists who participated. The list is extremely long and very impressive.

Van Soelen was born in Minnesota and traveled west to Nevada and settled there in 1910. Bouts with pneumonia and tuberculosis were the first things which brought him west. Before going to Santa Fe he first settled in Albuquerque to convalesce. He was a ranch hand while living in Albuquerque. Prior to coming to N.M. he had first gone to Nevada where he drove mules for a construction gang for the Western Pacific Railroad. He was offered a job with Wells Fargo as a driver but declined so he could go back back east and study art. He returned to where he had first been studying, to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He later became a member of the National Academy.

His days as a cowboy were some of his most romantic, he recalls, and it was that subject which became a reoccurring theme in his work. He married Virginia Carr, the daughter of a cattle baron in Abq. in 1921. They moved to Tesuque in 1926 where he spent the rest of his life.