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Louis Akin was born near Corvallis, Oregon, on June 6, 1868.  His artistic talents were largely self-taught until he reached the age of 28, when he recognized the need for formal art training and a broader artistic experience.  At that time, Akin moved to New York City and enrolled in the New York Art School.  Akin dropped out of art school in less than a year, but he remained in New York supporting himself by working as a commercial artist and magazine illustrator.  He became increasingly disenchanted with life in New York, and in 1903 accepted an offer to travel to northern Arizona to paint the Hopi people for a Santa Fe Railway advertising campaign.  From that time on, Louis Akin devoted his life to painting the landscapes and the people of the Colorado Plateau.

            From the Santa Fe Railway station in Flagstaff, Akin traveled to the Hopi village of Oraibi by horseback, a two-day journey.  He remained in Oraibi for nearly a year, during which time he adopted Hopi dress and participated in Hopi social life and ceremonies.  During that time, Louis Akin also produced more than two dozen paintings of the Hopi people and the land in which they lived.

            In 1904, Akin went to the Grand Canyon, where he lived for four months before traveling briefly to New York to exhibit his paintings.  Eastern art critics and collectors were highly impressed by Akin’s Grand Canyon landscapes.  These paintings were viewed as masterful renditions of color and perspective, evidencing an ability to capture subtle atmospheric phenomena with personal improvisations of color harmonies.  His intimate portraits of the Hopi people are recognized today as valuable ethno-historic documents in their depiction of details of Native American dress and daily life on the Colorado Plateau during the early part of the 20^th century.

            After exhibiting his work in New York, Akin once again left the east coast to return to Arizona, and in 1906 he made Flagstaff his permanent home.  From Flagstaff, Akin ventured again and again to the Hopi mesas and into the canyons and deserts of Arizona until his death in 1913 at the age of forty-four.

            Akin was fascinated by the Grand Canyon, and he devoted much of his artistic effort to it.  Of the 125 Akin paintings known today, approximately one-fourth of these depict the Grand Canyon. On display in Verkamp’s shop is “Evening—Grand Canyon,” the largest of his paintings. Completed in 1907, this painting shows the last rays of the sun on the walls of the inner canyon. “Evening-Grand Canyon” was rejected for display at the National Academy of Art in New York due to its large size. Unsuccessful in his attempt to sell the painting to the Santa Fe Railroad, Akin decided to cut the painting up and reuse the canvas. Fortunately, he couldn’t bring himself to do so. After Akin’s death in 1913, his friend John Verkamp bought the painting for Verkamp’s Curios where it is on permanent display.

           As a side note, Louis Akin is of no relation to more recent Grand Canyon artist/resident, Bruce Aiken.

 

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