This painting is an early painting by Henderson, completed in the first few years he was in Santa Fe.  This early work depicts two actual people he observed at Acoma Pueblo.  It gave the artist the opportunity to both fairly render the people he saw as well as indulge in his love of color while painting the lush fruits and colorful jewelry and clothing his subjects wear. These early works can be described as being in the "social realist" genre.  Later, Henderson's paintings are composite scenes and not the snapshot of real events we see here.

This painting was purchased by a long-standing patron of Henderson, Miss Dudley from Chicago.  The Dudley's had a home in France and once it made it's way there in the 1920s, it passed in ownership in Paris for three generations, initially being owned by the famous essayist and memoirist, Anais Nin.  If only this painting could talk!