Bent Franklin Larsen

American
(1882–1970)

Tuba City Weavers
1945

Oil on canvas
35 x 47 x 1.75 in.
Museum Permanent Collection
1984.575

Most of Larsen’s work depicts southwestern landscapes, but this piece centers around a pair of weavers in the Navajo Nation’s capital of Tuba City. During the first half of the twentieth century, the expansion of railway routes and the movement of prominent artists like Georgia O’Keeffe to the southwest heightened Americans’ appetites for tourism to Indigenous lands and encounters with Indigenous peoples. The tourist trade boomed and many craftspeople, like those depicted in this painting, shifted their production to cater to the souvenir market.

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This object has the following keywords:

• basket makers - Craftsmen who weave containers of twigs, rushes, thin strips of wood, or other flexible material.
• women