Alexandre Hogue, Penitente Morada, 1941

A Dramatic View of a New Mexican Morada by Dallas Nine Printmaker Alexandre Hogue

The present and very rare lithograph presents a Morada in Northern New Mexico, a religious meeting place used by the Penitente Brotherhood, a confraternity of Spanish-American Roman Catholic men. Rendered in Alexandre Hogue’s distinctive style and texture, a lone man approaches a windowless adobe building carrying wooden crosses in his hands. Though the mountains are rendered in palpable moody tones, the bright sun gleams towards the stark buildings and on to the man’s back forming a cross shaped shadow at his feet. The man’s face is hidden from our view; perhaps to show symbolically the great conviction the Penitente Brothers go to, to practice their religion in private.

In the late nineteenth century, Archbishop Lamy in New Mexico attempted to suppress the brotherhood in hopes of assimilating the members towards an Americanized Catholicism. The Brotherhood came into conflict with the new regime ushered under Lamy and he ordered them to cease. Instead, the Penitentes went underground. Alexandre Hogue describes in the, “Land of Little Churches Described by Dallas Artist in Taos,” Dallas Times Herald, September 25, 1927.

“Many people who don’t know a Morada when they see it tell visiting friends that Ranchos church is a Morada, but this is an unfair statement, for it is a grave insult to call a Catholic a Penetente [sic]. They are a secretive lot and no one knows exactly who are members … The Morada is an adobe building with but one door and no windows. There are crosses on the outside wall above the door, and along the roadside one frequently notices a cross planted in a heap of rocks—a place of prayer for those who pass on their daily errands.”

Alexandre Hogue is best known for his Dust Bowl paintings of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, for which he received national acclaim in the 1930s. Born in Memphis, Missouri, Hogue spent his childhood in Denton, Texas, and received his formal art education at the College of Art and Design in Minneapolis. After four years as a designer in New York, Hogue returned to Dallas in 1925 and worked as an illustrator for the Dallas Morning News and as a designer specializing in calligraphy and lettering for advertising firms in New York City. Eventually, Hogue turned to his artwork full time. In the 1930s, he was a leader in the Dallas Nine, and a founder of the Lone Star Printmakers. In 1947, Hogue was named chairman of the art department at the University of Tulsa, a position he held until his retirement in 1968. In 1976, the university established the Alexandre Hogue Gallery.

Hogue’s artworks are held in a number of important collections, including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Musée National D’Art Moderne in Paris.

Refs.: Lea Rosson DeLong, “Alexandre Hogue,” The Handbook of Texas Online; Lea Rosson DeLong, Nature’s Forms/Nature’s Forces: The Art of Alexandre Hogue (1984), pp. 127-129; Don Gray, “Alexandre Hogue, Dust Bowl Landscapes,” Hudson River Museum (1985), at www.jessieevans-dongray.com; Sharyn Udall and Andrew Connors, “Alexandre Hogue” in Art in New Mexico, 1900–1945 (1986), pp. 198–199; David J. Wishart, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains (2004), pp. 198–199; Lux, Annie, Historic New Mexico Churches (2007), pp. 72-75.