A prolific portrait painter and art instructor for nearly sixty years, Catharine Critcher brought to the Taos Society of Artists a genuine interest in capturing the physical appearance as well the emotional state of her Indian subjects.  The first and only woman inducted into the Taos Society, Critcher’s unanimous election to membership in 1924 was undoubtedly intended to help boost lagging sales from the Society’s annual exhibition circuit, in which not only the artists but the patrons were almost exclusively male.

Catharine Critcher was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on September 13, 1868, to Elizabeth and John Critcher, a wealthy couple whose aristocratic roots could be traced to the seventeenth century.  Rather than attend a traditional college, Critcher persuaded her parents to send her to the Cooper Union in New York, where she acquired the basics of an academic art education before enrolling in the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C.  Upon completing her studies in 1901, she established herself as a portrait painter of prominent society members.  Despite the relative success she enjoyed, in 1904 Critcher left for Europe and further training at the Académie Julian, Paris.  Within a year of her arrival she founded the Cours Critcher, a course aimed at helping the American art student adjust to the rigors of studying in a foreign country.  Critcher, whose submissions were never rejected from the annual Salon, also earned honors at the Académie and served as President of the American Women Painters in Paris.  Upon her return to the U.S. in 1909 she began teaching at the Corcoran before resigning to open the Critcher School of Painting in 1919.

When Critcher first visited New Mexico in 1920, she was immediately attracted to the expressive potential of the Spanish and Indian people.  While she did produce paintings of Indians posed in landscapes and astride horses, she remains best known for her portraits of the people of the Taos pueblo – several of which won her national recognition. Although Critcher never settled permanently in Taos, she spent summers there throughout the 1920s, returning to Washington in the winters to sell and exhibit her New Mexico work.  In 1924, she was recommended for membership in the Taos Society (along with Martin Hennings) by Bert Phillips and Oscar Berninghaus.  While the exact nature of her role within the Society remains somewhat unclear, she did participate in the exhibition circuit, was present at at least one annual meeting (1926), and remained active until the group disbanded in 1927.