AUDLEY DEAN NICHOLS (American, 1875-1941)
Moonrise on the Desert, 1919
Oil on canvas
16 x 24 inches (40.6 x 61.0 cm)
Signed and dated lower left: Audley Dean Nichols / 1919

Moving to El Paso for his health, Nichols became well known for his desert landscapes. Nichols studied at the Art Students League and the Metropolitan Museum of Art with figure painters Edwin H. Blashfield, Kenyon Cox, and Henry Siddons Mowbray. Nichols exhibited in El Paso and all three San Antonio Competitive exhibitions in the late 1920s. Moonrise on the Desert contains the Impressionist loose brushwork in the foreground typical of Nichols desert paintings. Moreover, the dark half-light of the foreground contrasts sharply with the bright clarity of the background mountains, thus underscoring the crystalline atmosphere of the Southwest, the Far away-Nearby.