Ralph M. Pearson, Duran Chapel, 1919

Rare Etching by Ralph Pearson

This etching depicts the Duran Chapel in the village of Talpa near Taos, New Mexico built in 1838. It is now in ruins but plans to restore the chapel are underway. Located a short distance east of the iconic San Francisco de Asis Church in Ranchos de Taos, the chapel was originally dedicated in honor of Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Talpa in Jalisco, Mexico for which the northern New Mexico village was named. A sister chapel was built a decade earlier and is still in active use as a chapel of ease for the famous church of St. Francis. The presence of these two chapels named for Marian images from Jalisco so close together in northern New Mexico is a testament to commerce among traders along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro connecting Mexico City to Santa Fe.

The devotion to Our Lady of Talpa arrived in the Taos area about 1815, and flowered some twenty years later with the building of the private Chapel of Our Lady of Talpa for which the local village is named. Nicolás Sandoval, an active and influential member of the Brotherhood in the Taos Valley, built the Talpa chapel at his own expense next to his own home, and very near to the chapel of San Juan.… It was later called the Duran Chapel after one of Sandoval’s daughters who married Francisco Duran.  — Rev. Juan Romero, The Penitente Brotherhood and Padre Martinez (2007)

Pearson was one of the earliest modern artists to establish himself in New Mexico and is counted among its most accomplished printmakers.

Ralph M. Pearson, a painter and etcher who had been liberated by the Armory show from “the straitjacket of convention,” took up residence on a ranch south of Taos in 1915. Pearson apparently brought his etching press to the ranch either in 1915 or shortly thereafter, for by 1918 he had produced a number of etchings sufficient for an exhibition in Santa Fe. … Among dated prints in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts [Museum of New Mexico], the earliest made in the state are an etching by Pearson and a lithograph by [Birger] Sandzen, both from 1919.
— Clinton Adams, Printmaking in New Mexico: 1880–1990 (1991)

Ralph Pearson studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, under C. F. Browne and Vanderpoel and was a member of the Art Students League of Chicago, the Chicago Society of Etchers, the New York Society of Etchers, California Art Club, the California Society of Etchers, and the Brooklyn Society of Etchers. His etchings garnered awards from the Chicago Society of Etchers (1914), the Pan Pacific Exposition, San Francisco (1915), the American Bookplate Society (1917), and the California Print Maker’s Society (1922). He also wrote on the arts and published How to See Modern Pictures (1925), Fifty Prints of the Year (1927), and a monthly column called “The Artist’s Point of View” in The Forum magazine. Ralph Pearson’s etchings are held in a number of important collections including the Museum of New Mexico, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library of Congress, the Los Angeles Museum of Fine Arts, the New York Public Library, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Mobile Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, and Columbia University.

Ref: Clinton Adams, Printmaking in New Mexico: 1880–1990 (1991).