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Authors' Note
Painters, sculptors, and graphic artists who resided in Texas
before World War II have recently become subjects of increased attention owing
to a blossoming of interest in their works. A few of these artists still
enjoy a national reputation -- Tom Lea (1907-2001), Dorothy Hood (1919-2002),
Forrest Bess (1911-1977), and Alexandre Hogue (1898-1994), for example -- and
information about their careers is relatively easy to obtain.
The vast majority of early Texas artists
have, however, receded into obscurity over the past half-century, even those who
enjoyed some celebrity at one time. And more than a few of these many
artists were quite good indeed, as indicated by the increasingly high prices
their works now command. Examples abound.
In the distant past were the
eighteenth-century sculptors at the San Antonio missions: Pedro Huizar (b.
1740); Antonio Salazar (b. ca. 1730); and the Frenchman Francisco, or "el
Frances." There followed the soldier-artists and the sketch artists
of the various boundary and railway surveys, along with the many limners who
came to the state in the middle of the nineteenth century. After them
came, in the last half of the nineteenth century, trained artists such as Julius
Stockfleth (1857-1935), Friedrich R. Petri (1824-1857), Eugenie Lavender (1817-1898), Louis Eyth (b. 1838), Henry Arthur McArdle (1836-1908),
William Henry Huddle (1847-1892), Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (1852-1917), and
Elisabet Ney (1833-1907). Even at the earliest date, Texas was not a
cultural desert.
Paul Schumann (1876-1946) in Galveston
produced superb marines with his palette knife. On her farm near Robstown,
Emily Rutland (1890-1983) portrayed farm animals with a spirit and ability that
attracted the generous comments of no less a critic than Carl Zigrosser. Mary Bonner (1887-1935) in San Antonio acquired an international reputation, for
a time, from her printmaking; in the same city Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922)
executed flawless impressions on canvas; and the sculptors Pompeo Coppini
(1870-1957) and Waldine Tauch (1892-1986) created timeless classical works.
Frank Reaugh (1860-1945) traveled annually from Dallas to paint the very air of
West Texas with a subtlety never equaled before or since. And in Dallas
Jerry Bywaters (1906-1989) championed a regionalist movement exemplified in the
works of Octavio Medellin (1907-1999), Allie Tennant (1892-1971), Dorothy Austin
(b. 1911), Charles Bowling (1891-1985), Don Brown (1898-1958), Otis Dozier
(1904-1987), Lloyd Goff (1908-1982), William Lester (1910-1991), Merritt Mauzey
(1897-1973), Florence McClung (1894-1992), Perry Nichols (1911-1992), and Everett
Spruce (1908-2002). More externally oriented artists in Fort Worth included
Bill Bomar (1919-1990), Veronica Helfensteller (1910-1964), Blanche McVeigh
(1895-1970), Dickson Reeder (1912-1970), Evaline Sellors (1903-1995), and Bror Utter
(1913-1993). In Houston polished works came from the hands and minds of Ruth
Uhler (1895-1967), Frederic Browne (1877-1966), E. Richardson Cherry (1859-1954), and
Grace Spaulding John (1890-1972). Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) recorded
scenes all around the state in inimitable watercolors and pastels.
Constance Forsyth (1903-1987) in Austin produced elegant semi-abstract studies of
natural forms while teaching in the printmaking department she helped
establish at the
University of Texas.
Many other talented artists made the state
their residence, for a time at least, in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, and have left reminders of that fact in numerous works of art that
are discovered anew each passing week. The chief purpose of the Woodmont Books release Texas Painters, Sculptors & Graphic Artists is
to preserve a record of these many artists for those who are or may become
interested in them.
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