Texas - Paintings

Blue, Pink, and white abstract contemporary circular painting by Houston, TX artist David Hardaker. Signed, titled, and dated by the artist on the reverse. Artist Statement: The wo...

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 12 x 16 Frame Size: 21 x 25 Medium: Oil Dated 1958 "Prickly Pear Path" Texas Hill Country Biography Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields that grow there in the springtime. Born in 1910 in Bastrop, Texas, he attended public schools in San Antonio. He also observed works in progress by the director of the San Antonio Art School, Jose Arpa, as well as landscape painter, Robert Wood. Wood is said to have paid Salinas five dollars a picture to paint bluebonnets because "he hated to paint bluebonnets". Salinas served in the military from 1943 to 1945. Although he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, he was allowed to live at home. At the fort, Colonel Telesphor Gottchalk assigned him to paint murals for the officer's lounge and various other projects, and Salinas continued to be able to paint during his entire conscripted period. Even before he achieved notoriety among galleries, dealers, and museums, Salinas was widely followed and appreciated by many Texans, including former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who may be considered responsible for launching Salinas popularity beyond the boundaries of Texas. In 1973, Texas capital, Austin, honored Salinas for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas closer together with his paintings". Salinas died in April 1973 in San Antonio, Texas. From the years of the Great Depression through President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, Texan Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) remained one of the Lone Star State's most popular artists. Today, his works remain popular with Texas collectors and those who love landscapes of the beautiful "Hill Country" that lies in the center of the state. One of the first Mexican-American painters to become widely recognized for his art, Salinas was a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as well as of Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Texas Governor John Connelly. In fact, President Johnson was so enamored with his Salinas paintings that the artist will forever be associated with America's first Texas-born President. Works by Porfirio Salinas are in a number of museum collections, grace the halls of the Texas State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, and are included in virtually every major private collection of Early Texas Art. Porfirio Salinas was born on November 6, 1910 near the small town of Bastrop, Texas, about thirty miles from Austin. His father, Porfirio G. Salinas (1881-1967), and his mother, Clara G. Chavez, struggled to make a hardscrabble living as tenant farmers, but eventually were forced to give up farming. The family moved to San Antonio, where Salinas' father was able to get a job working as a laborer for the railroad, but the scenic area around Bastrop, with its pine trees and the wide expanse of the Rio Grande River, would forever remain a touchstone for the artist. For the rest of his life, Salinas and his brothers went back frequently to visit their grandmother in her little farmhouse. When in Bastrop, Porfirio painted on the banks of the Rio Grande or in the groves of pine trees. The Salinas family was close-knit and Porfirio was the middle child of five children, so he had an older brother and sister as well as a younger brother and sister. His mother was a native of Mexico, so throughout his childhood the family made the long drive to Mexico to visit Clara Salinas' family. As a child growing up in the bi-lingual section of San Antonio, Salinas drew and painted incessantly and by the time he was ten, he was already producing work that was mature enough to sell to his schoolteachers. Many years later in an article in the New York Times he was described as a "boy whose textbooks were seldom opened and whose sketchbook was never closed." Instead of studying, the young artist spent his spare time watching artists paint in and around San Antonio. As an aspiring painter, Salinas was fortunate to grow up in the historic city, which had the most active art scene in Texas. It was his exposure to older, professional painters that encouraged the precocious young painter to leave school early in order to help his family and pursue a career as a professional artist, despite his father's inability to see art as a career with any future for his son. When Salinas was about fifteen he came to know the artist Robert W. Wood (1889-1979). He met Wood while he was employed in an art supply store and he soon began to work as an assistant to the English-born painter, who had moved from Portland to San Antonio in 1924. Although the diminutive Englishman was already an established professional artist, he did not have a great deal of formal art training and so he was then studying with the academically trained Spanish painter Jose Arpa (1858-1952) in order to augment his knowledge and give his work a more polished look. Salinas was an eager young man, and while working in Wood's downtown San Antonio studio he learned to stretch canvases, frame paintings and to sketch in larger compositions from small plein-air studies for the English artist. He began to accompany Wood and Arpa to the hills outside San Antonio, where they painted small Plein-air studies of fields of blue lupin - the state flower, the famous "Bluebonnets" of Texas - in the springtime and scenes of the gnarled Red Oaks as they changed color in the fall. He was soon assisting Wood in the tedious work of painting the tiny blue flowers that collectors wanted to see in the landscapes they purchased of central Texas. According to a 1972 newspaper story, "Legend has it that one day in the 1920s artist Robert Wood decided he could not bear to paint another bluebonnet in one of his landscapes. He hired young Porfirio Salinas to paint them in for him at five dollars a painting." Whether this story is accurate or apocryphal isn't clear, but the ambitious and independent young Salinas wasn't destined to be anyone's assistant for very long. The formative event of Porfirio Salinas' teenage years was the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, a Roaring-Twenties dream of the eccentric oilman Edgar B. Davis (1873-1951). These competitive shows of paintings of wildflowers and Texas life were mounted in San Antonio from 1927 to 1929. Held at the newly opened Witte Museum each spring, the exhibition featured large cash prizes donated by the philanthropic Davis, which were an inducement for artists to travel from all over the United States to paint in the Hill Country of Texas. The "Davis Competitions," as they were known, helped to cement San Antonio's reputation as an art center, a legacy that remains with the "River City" today. The shows generated a great deal of excitement in the area, helping to make celebrities of the some of the artists who had already settled there and encouraging others to make San Antonio their home. Over the three years that the wildflower competitions were held, more than 300 paintings were exhibited, and many thousands of viewers saw the paintings at the Witte Museum and on tours throughout the state and in New York. Each year Davis would generously purchase the winning paintings and then donate them to the San Antonio Art League. Young Porfirio Salinas would have been able to not only watch his two mentors - Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa - paint the works that they entered in the Davis Competitions, he would have been able to see Arpa take several of the major prizes, receiving the judge's accolades for "Verbena," "Cactus Flower" and "Picking Cotton," works that are still on view at the San Antonio Art League Museum today. Unfortunately, Davis eventually put his donations to work in other charitable endeavors, bringing to an end the wildflower events, but only after they inspired Salinas and other young painters and had helped to make wildflower paintings the most sought-after subject for traditionalist Texas collectors. In 1930, when he was only twenty, Salinas hung out a shingle and began to paint professionally, augmenting the sales of his easel paintings with what little business he could garner by painting signs for local concerns. It was a struggle for the young artist to make a living, as the effects of the Great Depression were settling in. His early works are very similar to those of Robert Wood's, both in subject matter and treatment. Salinas did small paintings of Bluebonnets for the tourists who visited San Antonio to see the famous Alamo as well as paintings of the Texas missions. While a few of his early works have a soft, tonalist quality, with subtle gradations of sunset colors, most were painted in a style that fits well within the currents of the late American Impressionist style, with solid drawing and a warm, chromatic palette. Like Robert Wood's works of the 1930s, the paintings Salinas produced as a young man were usually well composed and detailed views of the spring wildflowers in full bloom in the Texas countryside. In contrast to Wood's work, however, early Salinas compositions were usually pure landscapes without the pioneer farms or dilapidated fences that Wood often used to add visual interest to his wildflower scenes, and he also painted scenes of San Antonio itself as his mentor Jose Arpa had done. To residents of the Hill Country, Salinas was especially adept at accurately capturing the palette of the region and its unique atmosphere. In 1939 Salinas began working with Dewey Bradford (1896-1985), one of the great characters of Texas art. Bradford was a second-generation dealer whose family operated the Bradford Paint Company in Austin, where they sold art supplies, framed artwork, restored paintings and exhibited paintings by Texas artists. Salinas was struggling when he met Bradford, but the older man took the young artist under his wing and began to sell his work reliably, even though the prices that people would pay for a painting were still low due to the lingering effects of the Great Depression. Bradford was a born salesman with a gift for storytelling, and truth be told, a bit of embroidery. The relationship between Bradford and Salinas was often rocky, but it was to last the rest of the artist's life and give him a modest sense of loyalty and security, things which are all too rare in the art world. While Bradford could be critical of his work, Salinas knew that he had a dealer who encouraged him, believed in him and was not shy about singing his praises to anyone who entered Bradford's store on Guadalupe Street. During the early years of World War II Salinas met a pretty Mexican woman from Guadalajara named Maria Bonillas, who was working as a secretary for the Mexican National Railways office in San Antonio. While he was walking downtown with a painting of a bullfighter under his arm, he started a conversation with the young woman, and things progressed rapidly. The couple were married on February 15, 1942 and settled into life in bi-lingual San Antonio and they eventually purchased a tidy stone home on Buena Vista street that had a detached studio in back. By the time the United States entered World War II, Salinas was starting to make a decent living selling his art and beginning to garner recognition across Texas. However, in 1943, like millions of other young men, he was drafted into the service of his country. Fortunately, as an older Army draftee with special talents, after his training he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, right in San Antonio, allowing him to remain at home while still completing his obligation to "Uncle Sam." Because of his artistic abilities, Salinas was asked to do paintings for the Army as well as a mural for the Officer's Club, which has been re-discovered in recent years. In his spare time he kept working on landscapes and when the war ended in 1945, he was not faced with the same rocky transition from military to civilian life as many veterans. That same year, Salinas became a father as he and Maria celebrated the birth of his only child, Christina Maria Salinas. Like most landscape artists of the era, Salinas was an avid Plein-air painter, and he took his easel and paint box with him on trips throughout Texas and into Mexico. He and his wife traveled deep into her native country, where the artist painted the majestic volcanic peaks of Iztaccihuatl (known as the "Sleeping Woman" because of its unique shape) and Popocatepetl (called the "smoking mountain" because the volcano is still active), south of Mexico City. Salinas also painted studies of rustic villages and their residents. While his most popular paintings were always the scenes of the Texas Bluebonnets and other wildflowers that bloom all over the Hill Country in the spring, he also painted scenes of the twisted Texas oak trees of central Texas, the more arid landscapes of the Texas panhandle and West Texas, and the historic Texas missions; he even sold rapidly executed scenes of bullfights and cockfights for Mexican-American collectors. By the late 1940s, the American economy was finally growing again and wealthier Texans began to collect Salinas paintings, purchasing them from galleries in San Antonio and Dallas and at Dewey Bradford's County Store Gallery in Austin. Salinas also sold work to the Atlanta dealer Dr. Carlton Palmer, who represented Robert W. Wood for many years. In 1948 Palmer sold two large Salinas paintings to the Citizen National Bank in Abilene, Texas. Because Austin was the state capitol, Bradford counted many of the state's elite among his patrons, and due to his interest in history and literature, he played a large role in the cultural history of central Texas. Bradford introduced a number of the major Texas political figures to Salinas' work, including Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973), who was then in the House of Representatives and on his way to winning a controversial election that vaulted him in the United States Senate. Johnson became an enthusiastic collector, as did his political mentor, the legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn (1882-1961). Johnson decorated his Washington offices with Salinas paintings and he brought a number of them home to his vast LBJ Ranch, near Johnson City, Texas. In spite of his important patrons, Salinas went through a fallow and difficult period in the late 1950s. He had a volatile temperament, which made relationships difficult, and it took great patience for his wife to help him manage his career. As Salinas entered middle age his work began to sell steadily, but except for tourists who purchased his paintings in San Antonio, he was known primarily only to Texas art collectors. All that changed in 1961 with the election of John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) to the Presidency of the United States and his running mate Lyndon Johnson to the Vice Presidency. Johnson was an expansive, larger-than-life character and his status as a long, tall Texan in a cowboy hat was a large part of his imposing political image. During his storied career in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007) spent their time in Washington in a modest house on the edge of Rock Creek Park, but this home would not do for a Vice President. So, in 1961, the Johnsons purchased a French chateau-styled home in the Spring Valley section of the Capitol. Obtained from the famed socialite and ambassador Perle Mesta (1889-1975), the house came with a fine collection of French furniture and tapestries, and the designer Genevieve Hendricks was hired to meld the French look with objects from the Johnsons' overseas travels and paintings of the flora and fauna of their native Texas. Featured prominently in the foyer were the paintings of Porfirio Salinas. Because of the Johnsons' patronage, his work was mentioned in Time Magazine and other national publications. Lady Bird Johnson loved her landscapes of the Texas Hill Country and told reporters that, "I want to see them when ever I open the door, to remind me where I come from." After President Kennedy's death thrust Lyndon Johnson into the Presidency, he brought his Salinas paintings into the historic halls of the White House, further enhaning the Texas painter's national reputation. At the time of the President Kennedy's assassination, Salinas had completed a scene of a horse drinking titled "Rocky Creek" that was to have been presented to Kennedy during his ill-fated visit to Dallas. Instead, in an effort to memorialize the fallen President, Salinas painted a symbolic work of a lone horse depicted against foreboding clouds. During his tenure in the White House, President Johnson presented a Salinas landscape as a state gift to the President of Mexico, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1911-1979). During the 1960s, Salinas paintings sold briskly and, thanks to Presidential patronage, for escalating prices. In an interview with a writer from the New York Times, President Johnson enthused about the work of "his favorite artist" and said that, "his work reminds me of the country around the ranch." Salinas was invited to the LBJ Ranch frequently during the Johnson administration and his paintings were hung throughout the ranch, in the President's offices and even in the private quarters of the White House. The connection to President Johnson was a great boon to sales of Salinas paintings, and in 1964, when the demand was at its height, Texas Governor John Connelly (1917-1993) was told that all Salinas'work was sold and that he would have to wait for a painting. In 1960, a half century after his birth, Salinas was honored by his home town of Bastrop, a celebration that touched the modest artist. In 1962 Salinas was given a solo exhibition at the Witte Museum in San Antonio that featured more than twenty of his works. By the early 1960s, sales of reproductions of the artist's landscapes by the New York Graphic Society and other publishers grew rapidly, enlarging his audience throughout the United States. In 1967, Dewey Bradford helped to organize the production of a book of Texas stories titled "Bluebonnets and Cactus" (Austin: Pemberton Press: 1967), which was profusely illustrated with paintings by Salinas. His works were still popular when Salinas died after a brief illness in April of 1973, just a few months after former President Johnson's passing. He was memorialized in the City of Austin by Porfirio Salinas Day, which honored him for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas together with his paintings." Bastrop, Texas, the city of the artist's birth, has been holding a Salinas Art Exhibition annually since 1981. He painted hundreds of scenes of the wildflowers, including the various varieties of Blue Lupin, the state flower, as well as other flowering flora. These show the influence of his artistic mentors Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa Y Perea. Salinas also painted a number of scenes of Prickly Pear Cactus that show the influence of the English painter Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864-1939), who painted many such works during his tenure in Texas. He painted the more arid Texas landscape infrequently and these works are very rare today and sought after by collectors from the Texas Panhandle and West Texas. Salinas also painted many river landscapes along the Guadalupe, Rio Frio, the San Antonio and the Rio Grande. On trips to his wife's homeland of Mexico, he painted a number of scenes of the volcanic peaks as well as scenes of peasant villages and villagers. Figurative paintings are rare among Salinas' works and these scenes of bullfights, fandangos and cock fights are probably the least sought after of his paintings. There are also a small number of modest marines, painted on trips to the Texas and California coast. Salinas paintings are highly prized by collectors of early Texas art, with the paintings of wildflowers in greatest demand. Works by Porfirio Salinas can be found in a number of public collections, including the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas; the Texas State Capitol; the Texas Governor's Mansion; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Ranch; the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Bonham, Texas; Amarillo High School; the Witte Museum in San Antonio; the historic Joan and Price Daniel House in San Antonio; the Stark Museum in Orange, Texas; the R.W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport, Louisiana; the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo, Colorado; Texas A & M University and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Salinas has been featured in a number of reference works as well as anthologies devoted to American Western Art...

Colorful dark humor painting by Memphis-based contemporary artist Alex Paulus. The work features a central figurative plant creature looking up into the...

Dwight Holmes (1900-1986) Fort Worth, San Angelo Artist Image Size: 8 x 10 Frame Size: 12.5 x 14.5 Medium: Oil "Double Dam Area Ft. Worth Texas" Fort Worth Texas One mile upstream from the City Park dam on the Clear Fork of the Trinity River...

Contemporary abstract painting by local Houston artist Emmanuel Araujo. The work features swirling bursts of color in blue, red, pink, and yellow. Signed, titled, and dated on the re...

Unknown Artist 29" x 44" Oil on Canvas Framed Size: 36" x 51" Antique

By Gustav Likan This pieces is from the Eva Perón commissioned mural sketch collection from Likan's time as a commissioned artist in Argentina between 1950 and 1952. 8.25" x 10.5" A...

By Gustav Likan A painting of a green aThis pieces is from the Eva Perón commissioned mural sketch collection from Likan's time as a commissioned artist in Argentina between 1950 and...

Flower Power is an contemporary abstract painting by Texan artist Eleanor McCarthy. It can also be described as a abstract still-life painting if you see the white brush strokes as...

By Gustav Likan This piece depicts a couple on horseback followed by a man in a red military uniform. A dog runs by the group. This pieces is from the Eva Perón commissioned mural sk...

Early figurative portrait painting by Houston-based artist Buford Evans. The work features a black woman dressed in a green dress gingerly caressing her young child. Signed by the ar...

By Bartolome Sastre 57.5" x 45" Oil on Canvas A scene of a snowy road in the shadow of a mountain range in the distance. About the Artist: Bartolomé Sastre was born in Pollensa, a ...

By Gustav Likan This pieces is from the Eva Perón commissioned mural sketch collection from Likan's time as a commissioned artist in Argentina between 1950 and 1952. 6.5" x 8" Water...

By April Street 80" x 72" Mixed Media on Board This diptych depicts an Asian street scene with a woman in the foreground in April Street's distinctive style.

A golden hour painting of the hills of California during sunset, featuring pine trees and rolling green hills. Artist Unknown 28" x 20" Oil on Canvas Framed Size: 35" x 27.5"

Early figurative portrait painting by Houston-based artist Buford Evans. The work features a black man looking to the sky with an anguished expression on his face as a young child cl...

Donald Yena (1933- ) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 20 x 30 Frame Size: 28 x 38 Medium: Watercolor Dated 1975 "Suppertime Storm" Biography Donald Yena (1933- ) San Antonio Artist Don...

Colorful mixed media abstract painting by contemporary Houston-based artist Orna Feinstein. The work features multiple layers of colorful netting set against a green toned background...

Contemporary abstract painting by local Houston artist Emmanuel Araujo. The work features swirling bursts of color in yellow, red, and black. Signed, titled, and dated on the reverse...

Dwight Holmes (1900-1986) Fort Worth, San Angelo Artist Image Size: 9 x 12 Frame Size: 12 x 18 Medium: Oil Dated 1967 "West of Copperas Cove" Texas Dwight Holmes (1900-1986) Dwight C...

The strength and fragility of humanity is revealed in Larisa Safaryan‘s works. The smooth shape of an egg is the artist‘s “canvas” upon which ideas about life, renewal and rebirth ar...

The strength and fragility of humanity is revealed in Larisa Safaryan‘s works. The smooth shape of an egg is the artist‘s “canvas” upon which ideas about life, renewal and rebirth ar...

Modern naturalistic portrait painting by well-known Houston-based artist Herb Mears. The work features a detailed rendering of a jockey wearing a yellow and blue outfit standing next to his wife and a young lion. Signed by the artist in the front lower right corner. Retains the original DuBose Gallery label on the reverse. Currently hung in a complementary frame. Dimensions Without Frame: H 48 in. x W 54 in. Artist Biography: Born in New York City in 1923, Herb Mears was interested in art from a young age. He studied under Fernand Leger in Paris and went on to paint and study in various studios in France and Italy before his arrival in Houston in 1951. With colleague David Adickes, whom he had met in Paris, Mears decided to open an art school. Their Studio of Contemporary Arts finally settled in an old building on Main Street with Mears and Adickes hoping to give classes to potential students. However money was tight and Mears found himself as a draftsman for Houston Lighting and Power Company, a job he excelled at and enjoyed. Later, Mears was involved in the Contemporary Arts Association, frequently making trips to ensure security in addition to enjoying the art scene the Association provided. From the CAA to the Art League of Houston and the Museum of Fine Arts, Mears began to gain recognition. An abstract, or non-objective piece as he called it, won a prize at a competition held by the Museum of Fine Arts, earning him a teaching position at the Museum School. Mears also taught at the Contemporary Arts Museum, University of Houston...

Abstract figurative woodblock print of a beach landscape with a boat. The print is stamped by the artist and titled and editioned in pencil. This print is editioned 47 of 86 and the print is not currently framed. Artist Biography: Born in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1924, John Biggers studied at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) under Viktor Lowenfeld and muralist Charles White. In 1943, Biggers' mural, Dying Soldier, was included in the exhibition curated by Lowenfeld, Young Negro Art, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After serving in the United States Navy, Biggers transferred to Pennsylvania State University where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees as well as his doctorate in art education. In 1949, Biggers accepted a faculty position at Texas State University for Negroes (now Texas Southern University) in Houston, where he founded and chaired the art department until his retirement. In the early 50s, he won prizes for his work at annual exhibitions held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Dallas Museum of Art. In 1957, he traveled to Africa on a UNESCO fellowship to study Western African cultural traditions, becoming one of the first black artists to study the culture first-hand rather than through library research. His work was profoundly influenced by his experiences in Africa. He was known for his murals, but also for his drawings, paintings, and lithographs, and was honored by a major traveling retrospective exhibition from 1995 to 1997. He created archetypal imagery that spoke positively to the rich and varied ethnic heritage of African Americans, long before the Civil Rights era drew...

Colorful dark humor painting by Memphis-based contemporary artist Alex Paulus. The work features two cartoonish figures looking up at the bright blue sk...

Colorful humorous painting by Memphis-based contemporary artist Alex Paulus. The work features a cruise ship with many small figures participating in a variety of activities includin...

Contemporary abstract painting by local Houston artist Emmanuel Araujo. The work features a pair of birds with green eyes flying over purple and black toned water. Signed, titled, an...

Colorful surrealistic painting by Memphis-based contemporary artist Alex Paulus. The work features a distorted figure in a captain hat set next to a white sea bird. The yellow diamon...

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 27 x 33 Frame Size: 35 x 41 Medium: Oil On Canvas Late 1940s-Early 1950s "Bluebonnet Time" Texas Hill Country Landscape Biography Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields that grow there in the springtime. Born in 1910 in Bastrop, Texas, he attended public schools in San Antonio. He also observed works in progress by the director of the San Antonio Art School, Jose Arpa, as well as landscape painter, Robert Wood. Wood is said to have paid Salinas five dollars a picture to paint bluebonnets because "he hated to paint bluebonnets". Salinas served in the military from 1943 to 1945. Although he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, he was allowed to live at home. At the fort, Colonel Telesphor Gottchalk assigned him to paint murals for the officer's lounge and various other projects, and Salinas continued to be able to paint during his entire conscripted period. Even before he achieved notoriety among galleries, dealers, and museums, Salinas was widely followed and appreciated by many Texans, including former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who may be considered responsible for launching Salinas popularity beyond the boundaries of Texas. In 1973, Texas capital, Austin, honored Salinas for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas closer together with his paintings". Salinas died in April 1973 in San Antonio, Texas. From the years of the Great Depression through President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, Texan Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) remained one of the Lone Star State's most popular artists. Today, his works remain popular with Texas collectors and those who love landscapes of the beautiful "Hill Country" that lies in the center of the state. One of the first Mexican-American painters to become widely recognized for his art, Salinas was a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as well as of Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Texas Governor John Connelly. In fact, President Johnson was so enamored with his Salinas paintings that the artist will forever be associated with America's first Texas-born President. Works by Porfirio Salinas are in a number of museum collections, grace the halls of the Texas State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, and are included in virtually every major private collection of Early Texas Art. Porfirio Salinas was born on November 6, 1910 near the small town of Bastrop, Texas, about thirty miles from Austin. His father, Porfirio G. Salinas (1881-1967), and his mother, Clara G. Chavez, struggled to make a hardscrabble living as tenant farmers, but eventually were forced to give up farming. The family moved to San Antonio, where Salinas' father was able to get a job working as a laborer for the railroad, but the scenic area around Bastrop, with its pine trees and the wide expanse of the Rio Grande River, would forever remain a touchstone for the artist. For the rest of his life, Salinas and his brothers went back frequently to visit their grandmother in her little farmhouse. When in Bastrop, Porfirio painted on the banks of the Rio Grande or in the groves of pine trees. The Salinas family was close-knit and Porfirio was the middle child of five children, so he had an older brother and sister as well as a younger brother and sister. His mother was a native of Mexico, so throughout his childhood the family made the long drive to Mexico to visit Clara Salinas' family. As a child growing up in the bi-lingual section of San Antonio, Salinas drew and painted incessantly and by the time he was ten, he was already producing work that was mature enough to sell to his schoolteachers. Many years later in an article in the New York Times he was described as a "boy whose textbooks were seldom opened and whose sketchbook was never closed." Instead of studying, the young artist spent his spare time watching artists paint in and around San Antonio. As an aspiring painter, Salinas was fortunate to grow up in the historic city, which had the most active art scene in Texas. It was his exposure to older, professional painters that encouraged the precocious young painter to leave school early in order to help his family and pursue a career as a professional artist, despite his father's inability to see art as a career with any future for his son. When Salinas was about fifteen he came to know the artist Robert W. Wood (1889-1979). He met Wood while he was employed in an art supply store and he soon began to work as an assistant to the English-born painter, who had moved from Portland to San Antonio in 1924. Although the diminutive Englishman was already an established professional artist, he did not have a great deal of formal art training and so he was then studying with the academically trained Spanish painter Jose Arpa (1858-1952) in order to augment his knowledge and give his work a more polished look. Salinas was an eager young man, and while working in Wood's downtown San Antonio studio he learned to stretch canvases, frame paintings and to sketch in larger compositions from small plein-air studies for the English artist. He began to accompany Wood and Arpa to the hills outside San Antonio, where they painted small Plein-air studies of fields of blue lupin - the state flower, the famous "Bluebonnets" of Texas - in the springtime and scenes of the gnarled Red Oaks as they changed color in the fall. He was soon assisting Wood in the tedious work of painting the tiny blue flowers that collectors wanted to see in the landscapes they purchased of central Texas. According to a 1972 newspaper story, "Legend has it that one day in the 1920s artist Robert Wood decided he could not bear to paint another bluebonnet in one of his landscapes. He hired young Porfirio Salinas to paint them in for him at five dollars a painting." Whether this story is accurate or apocryphal isn't clear, but the ambitious and independent young Salinas wasn't destined to be anyone's assistant for very long. The formative event of Porfirio Salinas' teenage years was the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, a Roaring-Twenties dream of the eccentric oilman Edgar B. Davis (1873-1951). These competitive shows of paintings of wildflowers and Texas life were mounted in San Antonio from 1927 to 1929. Held at the newly opened Witte Museum each spring, the exhibition featured large cash prizes donated by the philanthropic Davis, which were an inducement for artists to travel from all over the United States to paint in the Hill Country of Texas. The "Davis Competitions," as they were known, helped to cement San Antonio's reputation as an art center, a legacy that remains with the "River City" today. The shows generated a great deal of excitement in the area, helping to make celebrities of the some of the artists who had already settled there and encouraging others to make San Antonio their home. Over the three years that the wildflower competitions were held, more than 300 paintings were exhibited, and many thousands of viewers saw the paintings at the Witte Museum and on tours throughout the state and in New York. Each year Davis would generously purchase the winning paintings and then donate them to the San Antonio Art League. Young Porfirio Salinas would have been able to not only watch his two mentors - Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa - paint the works that they entered in the Davis Competitions, he would have been able to see Arpa take several of the major prizes, receiving the judge's accolades for "Verbena," "Cactus Flower" and "Picking Cotton," works that are still on view at the San Antonio Art League Museum today. Unfortunately, Davis eventually put his donations to work in other charitable endeavors, bringing to an end the wildflower events, but only after they inspired Salinas and other young painters and had helped to make wildflower paintings the most sought-after subject for traditionalist Texas collectors. In 1930, when he was only twenty, Salinas hung out a shingle and began to paint professionally, augmenting the sales of his easel paintings with what little business he could garner by painting signs for local concerns. It was a struggle for the young artist to make a living, as the effects of the Great Depression were settling in. His early works are very similar to those of Robert Wood's, both in subject matter and treatment. Salinas did small paintings of Bluebonnets for the tourists who visited San Antonio to see the famous Alamo as well as paintings of the Texas missions. While a few of his early works have a soft, tonalist quality, with subtle gradations of sunset colors, most were painted in a style that fits well within the currents of the late American Impressionist style, with solid drawing and a warm, chromatic palette. Like Robert Wood's works of the 1930s, the paintings Salinas produced as a young man were usually well composed and detailed views of the spring wildflowers in full bloom in the Texas countryside. In contrast to Wood's work, however, early Salinas compositions were usually pure landscapes without the pioneer farms or dilapidated fences that Wood often used to add visual interest to his wildflower scenes, and he also painted scenes of San Antonio itself as his mentor Jose Arpa had done. To residents of the Hill Country, Salinas was especially adept at accurately capturing the palette of the region and its unique atmosphere. In 1939 Salinas began working with Dewey Bradford (1896-1985), one of the great characters of Texas art. Bradford was a second-generation dealer whose family operated the Bradford Paint Company in Austin, where they sold art supplies, framed artwork, restored paintings and exhibited paintings by Texas artists. Salinas was struggling when he met Bradford, but the older man took the young artist under his wing and began to sell his work reliably, even though the prices that people would pay for a painting were still low due to the lingering effects of the Great Depression. Bradford was a born salesman with a gift for storytelling, and truth be told, a bit of embroidery. The relationship between Bradford and Salinas was often rocky, but it was to last the rest of the artist's life and give him a modest sense of loyalty and security, things which are all too rare in the art world. While Bradford could be critical of his work, Salinas knew that he had a dealer who encouraged him, believed in him and was not shy about singing his praises to anyone who entered Bradford's store on Guadalupe Street. During the early years of World War II Salinas met a pretty Mexican woman from Guadalajara named Maria Bonillas, who was working as a secretary for the Mexican National Railways office in San Antonio. While he was walking downtown with a painting of a bullfighter under his arm, he started a conversation with the young woman, and things progressed rapidly. The couple were married on February 15, 1942 and settled into life in bi-lingual San Antonio and they eventually purchased a tidy stone home on Buena Vista street that had a detached studio in back. By the time the United States entered World War II, Salinas was starting to make a decent living selling his art and beginning to garner recognition across Texas. However, in 1943, like millions of other young men, he was drafted into the service of his country. Fortunately, as an older Army draftee with special talents, after his training he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, right in San Antonio, allowing him to remain at home while still completing his obligation to "Uncle Sam." Because of his artistic abilities, Salinas was asked to do paintings for the Army as well as a mural for the Officer's Club, which has been re-discovered in recent years. In his spare time he kept working on landscapes and when the war ended in 1945, he was not faced with the same rocky transition from military to civilian life as many veterans. That same year, Salinas became a father as he and Maria celebrated the birth of his only child, Christina Maria Salinas. Like most landscape artists of the era, Salinas was an avid Plein-air painter, and he took his easel and paint box with him on trips throughout Texas and into Mexico. He and his wife traveled deep into her native country, where the artist painted the majestic volcanic peaks of Iztaccihuatl (known as the "Sleeping Woman" because of its unique shape) and Popocatepetl (called the "smoking mountain" because the volcano is still active), south of Mexico City. Salinas also painted studies of rustic villages and their residents. While his most popular paintings were always the scenes of the Texas Bluebonnets and other wildflowers that bloom all over the Hill Country in the spring, he also painted scenes of the twisted Texas oak trees of central Texas, the more arid landscapes of the Texas panhandle and West Texas, and the historic Texas missions; he even sold rapidly executed scenes of bullfights and cockfights for Mexican-American collectors. By the late 1940s, the American economy was finally growing again and wealthier Texans began to collect Salinas paintings, purchasing them from galleries in San Antonio and Dallas and at Dewey Bradford's County Store Gallery in Austin. Salinas also sold work to the Atlanta dealer Dr. Carlton Palmer, who represented Robert W. Wood for many years. In 1948 Palmer sold two large Salinas paintings to the Citizen National Bank in Abilene, Texas. Because Austin was the state capitol, Bradford counted many of the state's elite among his patrons, and due to his interest in history and literature, he played a large role in the cultural history of central Texas. Bradford introduced a number of the major Texas political figures to Salinas' work, including Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973), who was then in the House of Representatives and on his way to winning a controversial election that vaulted him in the United States Senate. Johnson became an enthusiastic collector, as did his political mentor, the legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn (1882-1961). Johnson decorated his Washington offices with Salinas paintings and he brought a number of them home to his vast LBJ Ranch, near Johnson City, Texas. In spite of his important patrons, Salinas went through a fallow and difficult period in the late 1950s. He had a volatile temperament, which made relationships difficult, and it took great patience for his wife to help him manage his career. As Salinas entered middle age his work began to sell steadily, but except for tourists who purchased his paintings in San Antonio, he was known primarily only to Texas art collectors. All that changed in 1961 with the election of John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) to the Presidency of the United States and his running mate Lyndon Johnson to the Vice Presidency. Johnson was an expansive, larger-than-life character and his status as a long, tall Texan in a cowboy hat was a large part of his imposing political image. During his storied career in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007) spent their time in Washington in a modest house on the edge of Rock Creek Park, but this home would not do for a Vice President. So, in 1961, the Johnsons purchased a French chateau-styled home in the Spring Valley section of the Capitol. Obtained from the famed socialite and ambassador Perle Mesta (1889-1975), the house came with a fine collection of French furniture and tapestries, and the designer Genevieve Hendricks was hired to meld the French look with objects from the Johnsons' overseas travels and paintings of the flora and fauna of their native Texas. Featured prominently in the foyer were the paintings of Porfirio Salinas. Because of the Johnsons' patronage, his work was mentioned in Time Magazine and other national publications. Lady Bird Johnson loved her landscapes of the Texas Hill Country and told reporters that, "I want to see them when ever I open the door, to remind me where I come from." After President Kennedy's death thrust Lyndon Johnson into the Presidency, he brought his Salinas paintings into the historic halls of the White House, further enhaning the Texas painter's national reputation. At the time of the President Kennedy's assassination, Salinas had completed a scene of a horse drinking titled "Rocky Creek" that was to have been presented to Kennedy during his ill-fated visit to Dallas. Instead, in an effort to memorialize the fallen President, Salinas painted a symbolic work of a lone horse depicted against foreboding clouds. During his tenure in the White House, President Johnson presented a Salinas landscape as a state gift to the President of Mexico, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1911-1979). During the 1960s, Salinas paintings sold briskly and, thanks to Presidential patronage, for escalating prices. In an interview with a writer from the New York Times, President Johnson enthused about the work of "his favorite artist" and said that, "his work reminds me of the country around the ranch." Salinas was invited to the LBJ Ranch frequently during the Johnson administration and his paintings were hung throughout the ranch, in the President's offices and even in the private quarters of the White House. The connection to President Johnson was a great boon to sales of Salinas paintings, and in 1964, when the demand was at its height, Texas Governor John Connelly (1917-1993) was told that all Salinas'work was sold and that he would have to wait for a painting. In 1960, a half century after his birth, Salinas was honored by his home town of Bastrop, a celebration that touched the modest artist. In 1962 Salinas was given a solo exhibition at the Witte Museum in San Antonio that featured more than twenty of his works. By the early 1960s, sales of reproductions of the artist's landscapes by the New York Graphic Society and other publishers grew rapidly, enlarging his audience throughout the United States. In 1967, Dewey Bradford helped to organize the production of a book of Texas stories titled "Bluebonnets and Cactus" (Austin: Pemberton Press: 1967), which was profusely illustrated with paintings by Salinas. His works were still popular when Salinas died after a brief illness in April of 1973, just a few months after former President Johnson's passing. He was memorialized in the City of Austin by Porfirio Salinas Day, which honored him for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas together with his paintings." Bastrop, Texas, the city of the artist's birth, has been holding a Salinas Art Exhibition annually since 1981. He painted hundreds of scenes of the wildflowers, including the various varieties of Blue Lupin, the state flower, as well as other flowering flora. These show the influence of his artistic mentors Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa Y Perea. Salinas also painted a number of scenes of Prickly Pear Cactus that show the influence of the English painter Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864-1939), who painted many such works during his tenure in Texas. He painted the more arid Texas landscape infrequently and these works are very rare today and sought after by collectors from the Texas Panhandle and West Texas. Salinas also painted many river landscapes along the Guadalupe, Rio Frio, the San Antonio and the Rio Grande. On trips to his wife's homeland of Mexico, he painted a number of scenes of the volcanic peaks as well as scenes of peasant villages and villagers. Figurative paintings are rare among Salinas' works and these scenes of bullfights, fandangos and cock fights are probably the least sought after of his paintings. There are also a small number of modest marines, painted on trips to the Texas and California coast. Salinas paintings are highly prized by collectors of early Texas art, with the paintings of wildflowers in greatest demand. Works by Porfirio Salinas can be found in a number of public collections, including the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas; the Texas State Capitol; the Texas Governor's Mansion; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Ranch; the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Bonham, Texas; Amarillo High School; the Witte Museum in San Antonio; the historic Joan and Price Daniel House in San Antonio; the Stark Museum in Orange, Texas; the R.W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport, Louisiana; the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo, Colorado; Texas A & M University and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Salinas has been featured in a number of reference works as well as anthologies devoted to American Western Art...

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears,.. â€

The strength and fragility of humanity is revealed in Larisa Safaryan‘s works. The smooth shape of an egg is the artist‘s “canvas” upon which ideas about life, renewal and rebirth ar...

Green and white abstract contemporary circular painting by Houston, TX artist David Hardaker. Signed, titled, and dated by the artist on the reverse. Artist Statement: The work is ...

acrylic, charcoal, pencil, pastel, oil stick

Pink and green abstract contemporary circular painting by Houston, TX artist David Hardaker. Signed, titled, and dated by the artist on the reverse. Artist Statement: The work is a...

Orange and gray abstract contemporary circular painting by Houston, TX artist David Hardaker. Signed, titled, and dated by the artist on the reverse. Artist Statement: The work is ...

Martin Rosenthal "Triangles and Semi Circles" 1965 Encaustic & Oil paint on paper 20"x13" unframed Signed and dated in ink lower left Martin Rosenthal 189...

Contemporary abstract painting by local Houston artist Emmanuel Araujo. The work features a mysterious night scene of green and black foliage. Signed, titled, and dated on the revers...

"PLowing Ahead" by Robert Hagan is an original oil on canvas and measures 101x58 in. In this large western original painting by Australian artist Robert Hagan, you witness the raw ...

Naturalistic portrait of Jim Derrick by the artist Lou Benesch. The portrait features a central figure clad in a cowboy hat, nice work shirt, and a gold bracelet leaning against a po...

Colorful abstract painting by contemporary Houston artist Peter Healy. The work features a variety of vibrant, hard-edged intertwined shapes. Signed, titled, and dated on the reverse...

Modern geometric abstract night scene by Houston, TX artist David Adickes. The work features two wooden boats resting along a green shore. Signed by the artist at the bottom right an...

John Dudley Image Size: 13.25 x 25.25 Frame Size: 20.25 x 32.25 Medium: Watercolor "Autumn home"

Antique English 1800's cigar case witha portrait of a woman painted on the front. On the back, it reads "Cigares" 5.5 x 2.75 inches Papier mâché, leather, oil paint

Orange and gray abstract contemporary circular painting by Houston, TX artist David Hardaker. Signed, titled, and dated by the artist on the reverse. Artist Statement: The work is ...

White Rose by Susan Meeks was just painted in 2024 as part of her floral collection. White Roses is gallery wrapped so there is no need for a frame. White roses symbolize loyalty, ...

acrylic on canvas

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears,.. â€

Erma Zago (Bovolone 1880 - Milan 1942) Title: Untitled Venetian Scene Size: 8" x 10" Framed: 14.5" x 17.5" Medium: Oil on Board Markings: LL "E. Zago" ...

acrylic on paper

acrylic & pastel on paper

Luis Salazar is an artist living in Quito, Ecuador. He is know for his Sunday exhibitions at the Main Park in Quito. He has been featured in exhibitions t...

Edward Chalmers Leavitt (1842 - 1904) Rhode Island Artist Image Size: 36 x 28 Frame Size: 42.5 x 34.5 Newcomb Macklin Frame. Medium: Oil Dated 1889 "Duck Hunt" Mergansers Edward Chalmers Leavitt (1842 - 1904) Edward Chalmers Leavitt, artist, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, March 9, 1842, the son of Rev. Jonathan and Charlotte Esther (Stearns) Leavitt. His paternal ancestor was John Leavitt, who came to Massachusetts Bay in the first ship and settled in Hingham. On the maternal side, he is descended from John Alden and Priscilla Mullens, who came to Plymouth in the Mayflower. Leavitt was educated in private schools in Providence, and at Kimball Union Academy, Meriden, New Hampshire. During the Civil War in 1862 and 1863, he served in the navy on the U.S.S. Galena. In his profession of artist, Mr. Leavitt is especially noted as a painter of fruit, flowers and still life. He exhibited in the National Academy for several years and has made many successful exhibitions in Providence and Boston. He was a member of the Boston and Providence art clubs, and the Providence Press Club. He was also a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. In politics his proclivities are mainly Republican. He has been twice married: first, May 19, 1877, to Ellen M. Fuller; and second, April 22, 1880, to Elizabeth S. Chace. Submitted November 2004 by Edward Bentley, Art Collector and Researcher from Lansing, Michigan. Source is the publication "Men of Progress: Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Leaders in Business and Professional Life from the State of Rhode Island." New England magazine. 1896. Edward C. Leavitt, born in 1842, has been described as "Providence, Rhode Island's leading still-life painter" in the late 19th Century. (Zellman 324) His teacher, James Morgan Lewin, was a prominent still-life painter in Fall River, Massachusetts, a neighboring town. Leavitt, a detailed, sharp-focused, realistic painter, was in love with texture and light, and was prolific and successful, painting a variety of still life subjects including flowers, fruit and even fish and dead game animals. His objects, including costly antiques and household decorative items, were often placed on ornamental, gleaming surfaces. He was a frequent exhibitor at the National Academy of Design in the 1870s and 1890s. The artist, who died in 1904, moved from a position of success and popularity to being ignored for many years until the publication of William H. Gerdts and Russell Burke's American Still-Life Painting in 1971. It is uncertain whether this disastrous loss of respect took place because Leavitt's work declined in quality during the last decade of his life, or because he was a victim of the periodic shifts in taste and fashion that afflict the arts. Sources: Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art Biography from Roger King Fine Art Edward Leavitt was one of the leading still life artists of nineteenth century New England. He lived and worked in Providence, and studied with James Morgan Lewin, a leading painter of the Fall River School, which, in the late 19th Century, was one of the most important centers of still life painting. While Lewin branched out into other types of painting, Leavitt remained devoted to the art of the still life. His paintings are sharply focused, realistic, and carefully finished. Ornate objects such as urns, ewers, platters, cut glassware...

Marilyn Monroe Art on Plywood. Acrylic and vintage book pages adhered on plywood. Ready to hang. The dimensions are 32x24 inches and 1/2 inch thick....

Modern abstract landscape painting by Louisiana artist Robert Gordy. The work features his iconic tubular figure set against a surrealist night landscape scene. Signed and dated in t...

By Patti Rock 5" x 15" Oil on Board Framed Size: 13.25" x 23.25"

Searching for Andy (Warhol) references woman looking at one of the 199 paintings that Andy Warhol did of Mao. This painting is usually seen in the museum exhibitions around the world Looking for Andy (Warhol) is 16" x 10" and is framed which makes it 20 " x 14" . The artist describes himself as one of the New Orientalists which is a traveling painter in the modern world. Raj Chaudhuri (b 1967) My work comes from my life as a human being. I paint what I know and love. Capturing people and their interaction with the environment interests me—be it urban or rural, cityscape or landscape. I strive to find beauty in everyday happenings and how we experience this amazing world in which we live. Growing up in India, I feel my work is enriched by the depth of culture, vibrant colors and energy there. Twenty-three years ago, Colorado became home, giving me a longstanding enjoyment of the mountains, the brilliance of people here and the rich history of the west. I truly enjoy traveling and painting on location; I thrive in painting subjects with which I have a deep connection and understanding of people, structures and landscape. Art has always been my passion. I found ways to incorporate my artistic abilities in UI design and software development before coming to art full time. To a great extent I find that what like in computer design and now in art is that we are creating abstractions of the real world. There are repeating patterns in how we solve problems in many arenas. The creation of a painting is a technical and visionary problem, with many aspects behind the brushstrokes and values. These challenges underlie the thrill of creating a piece that speaks to viewers, to see what we feel and know about the world around us in art. To me painting is about finding beauty, balance and something visually engaging. I am fascinated by how light illuminates my compositions. It is different literally in every painting! The design of a painting to me is paramount, and I try and find something beautiful, simple and clear in the composition and then build in layers upon layers of complexity. I want to lead the viewer through a visual journey and have them stay connected to the painting. Art is a way of expressing something deeply personal along with the pure enjoyment of the visual. My goal is to find an interesting design clearly present in each painting, so the viewer sees the abstract visual dialogue that sets up the appealing story of the subject in the painting. 2024 Best of Show Presented by the Coors Western Art Advisory Committee (last image of horse in snow...

Colorful abstract painting by contemporary Houston artist Peter Healy. The work features a variety of vibrant, hard-edged intertwined shapes. Signed, titled, and dated on the reverse...

Colorful abstract painting by contemporary Houston artist Peter Healy. The work features a variety of vibrant, hard-edged intertwined shapes. Signed, titled, and dated on the reverse...