Herschel C. Logan, Old Mission, Rancho de Taos, 1926

This luminous woodcut by one of the Prairie Printmaker founders, Herschel C. Logan, depicts the historic mission church at Rancho De Taos, New Mexico. In striking contrasts and shadows, Logan depicts the façade of the chapel bathed in morning light as a shrouded visitor approaches the gate. The San Francisco de Asis Mission Church was built between 1772 and 1816. As with all mud structures, maintenance of the church is continual. With over two centuries of community hands having affected the form of the building, it is in a poetic sense, a living entity. For over a century, this church has attracted visitors and inspired countless artists. As Georgia O’Keeffe once noted, “Most artists who spend any time in Taos have to paint it, I suppose, just as they have to paint a self-portrait.” According to D’Emilio and Campbell, “The Ranchos de Taos Church has been portrayed more often, by more artists than any other church in the United States, perhaps in the world. It has been interpreted so widely that it has become an artistic icon. . . In harmony with its surroundings, the Ranchos Church exerts a quiet force which has universal appeal.”

Herschel Logan was born in Missouri in 1901. His mother passed away a year after, and the family moved to a farm in Winfield, Kansas. Logan showed immense interest in art as a youth often sketching the Kansas prairie as a boy. His first drawings were cartoons of the family barn. He enrolled for a year’s training at the Chicago Academy of Art. After art school, Logan returned to Wichita, Kansas where it was recommended to mentor with printmaker Coy A. Seward, who worked at Western Lithograph. Seward was not only a communication artist and arts advocate, but he was a printmaker himself. With Seward’s coaching, Logan was already recognized and awarded for his prints at the young age of 23. An annual exhibition of wood block prints at the Wichita Art Association in 1929 put Logan’s woodcuts in the national eye. In 1930, along with C.A. Seward and others, Herschel Logan became the youngest founding member of the Prairie Printmakers. Logan created 140 prints between the years 1921 and 1938 earning himself the nickname “The Prairie Woodcutter”. After Seward’s early and unexpected death in 1939, Logan quit making prints and focused on writing and illustrating books. After his retirement, he resumed making prints again until his death in 1987 in Santa Ana, California.

Herschel Logan’s artworks are held in a number of important collections, including the Wichita Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Spencer Museum of Art. His work was exhibited primarily in Kansas in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and it can be found in collections across the state including the Sandzén Memorial Art Gallery, the Beach Museum of Art, the Topeka Public Library, the Emprise Bank Collection, the Kansas State Historical Society, and the Kansas Museum of History.

Refs: Sandra D’Emilio and Suzan Campbell, Spirit & Vision: Images of Ranchos de Taos Church, (1987); Thompson, Barbara, In the Middle of America Printmaking & Print Exhibitions, C.A. Seward and Friends Wichita, Kansas 1916-1946 (2013); Thompson, Barbara, Charles M. Capps Etchings & Aquatints, Lithographs and Block Prints (2018).