William Victor Higgin's New Mexico Skies (August Skies) is an iconic painting of the New Mexico landscape: a panoramic desert view, captured from a precarious spot on the north rim of the Rio Grande Gorge, of white blocklike clouds floating in a brilliant sky over the Picuris Mountains south of Taos. ... Higgins spent his early years there painting at the famed Taos Pueblo, the virtual center of Pueblo Indian life and culture. He sent many of his works featuring Native Americans in their everyday activities back to his sponsors in Chicago, where they won prizes in the Art Institute's annual juried exhibitions. ... In 1943 he made a final attempt to paint a masterwork, resulting in New Mexico Skies. He exhibited the painting at the National Academy in New York before selling it to David Broderick.

from Snite Museum of Art, Selected Works: Snite Museum of Art (Notre Dame, 2005)