Navajos Breaking Camp

Artist Gerald Cassidy (1879-1934) left his job as a commercial art director in New York and moved to New Mexico for health reasons at the age of twenty. The people and scenery of the Southwest would come to define Cassidy’s artistic career and legacy. He became a founding member of the Santa Fe Art Colony in 1912 and enjoyed a reputation as a portraitist, landscape artist and award-winning muralist. Cassidy died unexpectedly from lead poisoning in 1934 while painting a WPA mural for the federal building in Santa Fe.

At the request of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, this oil on canvas painting was purchased from Cassidy’s widow specifically for the Department of the Interior in 1935. The setting is reputedly the Navajo Reservation at the Smith Lake, near the Crownpoint Trading Post in northwestern New Mexico. This piece depicts the early morning hours in which a Navajo Yeibichai--a curative ceremony--has concluded and the attendees are heading home. During the winters between 1928 and 1932, Cassidy is said to have witnessed numerous Yeibichai and made careful sketches to accurately capture details.