Early in July of 1916, Julius Rolshoven and his wife, Harriette, stepped from the passenger wagon of the Denver & Rio Grande narrow gauge railway known as the Chili Line onto the dusty platform at Taos Junction, thirty miles west of Taos proper. As the train belched its way northward, they brushed at the soot that had settled on their impeccable white clothing. Standing on the platform surrounded by trunks and bags labeled “Rolshoven, Florence, Italy,” they anxiously awaited the motor stage that would take them the last torturous leg of their journey to Taos.

Gustave Baumann, a young artist who had just arrived in New Mexico and who would eventually become a valued member of the Santa Fe Art Colony, was the Rolshovens’ fellow passenger on their journey from Santa Fe to Taos. He included a humorous account of the adventure in his memoir published in El Palacio in 1972. Baumann’s amusement grew as he observed the apparent incongruity between this sophisticated and obviously well-traveled couple and the primitive conditions in which they now found themselves.

The driver of the motor stage soon arrived, a tall, lanky man dressed in weathered blue overalls and a tattered Stetson hat. Baumann recalled that “a cud of tobacco gave his walrus mustache great mobility as he surveyed the scene, looking us over and then scratching his head as he counted the baggage.” Mrs. Rolshoven was dismayed when she learned that her bags could not be delivered until the morning. She had expected to dress for dinner.

– Virginia Couse Leavitt, excerpt from unpublished manuscript

Julius Rolshoven (1858-1930), a consummate traveler, was a sought-after portraitist on both sides of the Atlantic. He created vibrant likenesses of his sitters and excelled in costumed genres and landscapes. He was accepted as a member of the Taos Society of Artists in July 1918.

Leaving Detroit at nineteen to study in Europe, Rolshoven attended the Düsseldorf Academy and the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, where he met charismatic artist and teacher Frank Duveneck. He continued his studies with Duveneck in Venice and Florence, becoming one of the favored “Duveneck Boys,” before going to the Académie Julian in Paris. Leaving behind a successful Parisian studio in 1896, he established another in London.

By 1902, he had returned to Florence and within five years bought the Castello del Diavolo, a dilapidated 11th century “castle” that the Rolshovens beautifully restored over the ensuing years, revealing century-old frescoes beneath whitewashed walls.

In 1910, Rolshoven made a painting trip to Tunisia, reveling in the culture and clothing of the people of North Africa. “For the painter Tunis is a veritable paradise,” he wrote. The artist could not have foreseen that he would soon discover in the American Southwest an equivalent to the painterly qualities he loved in North Africa. The outbreak of World War I brought Rolshoven and his future wife, Harriette Blazo, back to America and eventually to the Taos art colony.