Hennings, Ernest Martin American, NM (1866-1956) 'BENEATH THE COTTONWOODS' lithograph on woven paper signed, titled & numbered: lower margin '64/100, Beneath the Cottonwoods, E. Martin Hennings' image size: H10in W10in *Biography: E. Martin Hennings was born in Pennsgrove, New Jersey, in 1886, and raised in Chicago. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and the Art Institute of Chicago before enrolling in the Munich Academy in 1914, where he first began to abandon his classical realist training. With the onset of WWI, Hennings returned to Chicago, where he was an instructor at the Art Institute. In 1917 he was sponsored to travel to the Southwest. It was on this trip that Hennings first discovered Taos, where he'd move permanently in 1924, banding together with friends from Munich, Walter Ufer and Victor Higgins, to form the Taos Society of Artists. The remainder of his life was devoted to rich painterly works that often venerated his Native American subjects. Today Hennings' work can be found in eleven prestigious American museum collections including the Stark Museum of Art, Phoenix Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, C M Russell Museum, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Pennsylvania academy of Fine Arts, and Smithsonian American Art Museum