Warren E. Rollins
(1861 - 1962)
"Warren E. Rollins was raised in California. He was the pupil of Virgil Williams at the San Francisco School of Design, becoming assistant director of the school. In 1887 after further study in the East he moved to San Diego. He began to specialize in Indian subjects, traveling through the Western states. In 1900 he was in Arizona painting Hopi Indians. He also worked at the Chaco Canyon ruins in northern New Mexico and had a studio near El Tovar at the Grand Canyon. Rollins was an early member of the Santa Fe art colony, along with Carlos Vierra, Gerald Cassidy, Kenneth Chapman, and Sheldon Parsons, arriving in 1915 through his friendship with E. I. Couse. He had previously spent years at Pueblo Bonita, NM. According to AIW and HAR, Rollins had the first formal exhibition in Santa Fe, showing Indian paintings before 1910 so that he was properly regarded as the Dean of the Santa Fe Art Colony." ARTISTS OF THE AMERICAN WEST: Peggy & Harold Samuels, 1985