Impressionist Art

Artist: Voskan Galstian Work: Original Painting, Handmade Artwork, One of a Kind Medium: Oil on Linen Year: 2024 Style: Abstract Art, Title: Second Cycle Size: 30" x 40" x 1' inch...

Title: British Impressionist Watercolor of Seaside Dock with Boat and Figures by Anthony Avery (British 1946-2023) Original watercolor on artists paper, unframed Dimensions: 15 x 11....

Artist: Voskan Galstian Work: Original Painting, Handmade Artwork, One of a Kind Medium: Acrylic on Canvas Year: 2023 Style: Abstract Art, Title: Marathon 2 Size: 36" x 36" x 1.5...

A superb late 19th century French impressionist oil on board portrait of a man with a pipe. Painted with short and fast brush strokes by a highly competent artist. A striking period...

Edgars Vinters (1919-2014) Edgars Vinters is working in oil, watercolor and monotype techniques. He paints landscapes in different seasons and flowers. In 1970 the significant place...

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 30 x 40 Frame Size: 39 x 49 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dated 1957 "Bluebonnet Creek" 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...

Medium: Lithograph and stencil on vélin paper Year: 1945 Paper Size: 17 x 13 inches Inscription: Signed in the plate and unnumbered, as issued Notes: From the folio, Degas, Ten Balle...

Large-format vertical painting in the style of impressionism, painted in oil, palette knife, in the technique of pastoral painting, which gives a 3D effect when viewed. The painting...

Artist: Fermin Santos Alcade Title: Catedral de Toledo, Espana II Year: Circa 1960 Medium: Oil on canvas board Canvas board size: 28.5 x 21.25 inches...

Early American impressionist landscape painting. Framed. Possibly signed verso. Oil on board.

Opera molto luminosa ,divisionista Cornice autentica 1800 fattura Italiana Enrico Reycend (Torino 1855 - ivi 1928). E' stato un pittore Italiano ,nato a Torino Studiò all'accademia...

Title: Holy Aden Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 11 .5 x 8 inches Frame: Framing options available! Condition: The painting appears to be in excellent condition. Year: 2015 Arti...

Suchitra Bhosle's "Demure Longing" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a young woman looking off into the distance while resting in a doorway. About the Artist: Such...

Impressionist New York City winter city-scene depicting Times Square in New York City. This piece is done in a most intimate, yet energetic way. Christopher is known for capturing th...

G. Harvey (Gerald Harvey Jones) (1933-2017) San Antonio, Austin, and Fredericksburg Artist Image Size: 12 x 9 Frame Size: 26 x 23 1985 "My Garden" G. Harvey (Gerald Harvey Jones) (19...

Tranquil Shores Paul Molinard 19/20th Century French Artist signed oil on board, unframed board : 10.5 x 14.5 inches Inscribed verso Provenance: private collection, France Condition...

Bold mid century impasto landscape of Mt. Rose in oil by Nancy Coe (American, 1932-1998), c.1968. This piece has evocative, heavy textures from the artist's use of a palette knife. Signed in pen in the lower right corner. Gallery sticker on back of frame. Presented in a copper-colored frame. Image size: 27.25"H x 28.38"W Nancy Patricia Coe (American, 1932-1998), was born in San Jose, California to Henry Surtcliff Coe and spent most of her life on Rancho San Felipe in a two-story, brick colonial residence, originally built by her father, on a commercial cattle ranch. With its weeping willow trees and picturesque red barn, it made for a happy home nestled in the heart of San Felipe Valley. Henry Coe State Park is named after her Grandfather Henry Willard Coe. She studied art at Stanford University and graduated in the 1950's. While there, she met S. Gainer Pillsbury, MD, a fellow alumnus, whom she married on June 19, 1956. While an accomplished user of charcoals and Conte crayons, Ms. Coe painted in primarily in oils, showing and winning awards in Reno, Nevada in the early 1960's. Her works, including landscapes and portraits, have been featured in numerous newspaper articles in the Reno Gazette-Journal. Her palette-knife painting of Salvador and Virginia Prado, two ranch hands, was featured on the cover of a Mexican-American history textbook, A Guide to the Study of the Mexican-American by Feliciano Rivera (1969) and published at San Jose State University. Her paintings of Sada S. Coe (her aunt) and Henry “Harry” W. Coe, Jr. are featured in the museum at Henry Coe State Park in Morgan Hill...

Watercolor of a village by Artemis Wilhelm (American, 20th Century). Bold pastel outlines create solid shapes, filled with watercolor to create tone an...

Beautifully framed large Thomas Kinkade "Hometown Lake, Hometown Memories IV". Measures 32.5 x 38.5 in excellent condition. Limited edition Artist Proof 267/495.

Drypoint etching rawing of a coastal scene with figures drawing a net or boat form the sea by Sir Francis (Frank) Job Short (British, 1857 - 1945) Sir Frank Short, Royal Academy*, was a printmaker and teacher of printmaking. He revived the practices of mezzotint* and aquatint* engraving, and also wrote about printmaking to educate a wider public. Signed "Frank Short" lower right with monogram in the print "S within a shield" Titled lower left "Rough Weather at Blatchington" Lower left "Trial Proof" Image, 8.5"H x 10.88"W Mat, 16"H x 20"W x 0.13 Professionally cleaned and ph nuetral washed by our paper conservator. (new images posting) Francis Job Short was born on 19 June 1857 in Britain, at Stourbridge, Worcestershire. He was educated to be a civil engineer. He was engaged on various works in the Midlands until 1881, when he came to London as assistant to Mr Baldwin Latham in connection with the Parliamentary Inquiry into the pollution of the river Thames. In 1883 he was elected an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Having worked at the Stourbridge School of Art in his early years he joined the South Kensington School of Art*, in 1883. He also worked at the life class under Professor Fred...

1880s Century Original California School Oil Painting of Native Americans Fishing in Sierras by Ransome Gillet Holdredge Wonderful landscape of Sierra Mountains in Hudson River Scho...

Yuri Krotov was born 1964 in Grivenskaya Cossack Settlement, Krasnodar Territory, located close to the Azov Sea. At the age of 8 he met a local painter G.A. Polugaev who became his ...

Signed pointillist oil on canvas landscape by French Neo-Impressionist painter Yvonne Canu. The work depicts a view of revellers on a boat travelling along the River Seine in Paris, ...

Title: French Impressionist Gouache of Cathedral and Timber-Framed Houses by Fanche Lel Size: 8.5 inches (height) x 6.25 inches (width) Gouache painting on card, unframed Condition: ...

Title: French Impressionist Oil Painting of Horses and Caravans in Pastoral Scene By Fanch Lel (French b. 1930) Size: 10.75 x 13.25 inches (height x width) Oil painting on board, unf...

This artwork masterfully captures a quaint, snow-covered village at dusk. The sloping street, lined with bare trees, leads the eye upward to clusters of charming, pastel-colored hous...

The painting depicts the Venice Canal flooded with soft sunlight. The water reflects the warm colors of the sky and the majestic facades of palaces decorated with arches and columns....

Venus. 1859. Etching and drypoint. Kennedy catalog 59 state ii; Glasgow catalog 60 state ii. 6 x 9 (sheet 8 x 11 3/16). Glasgow records 27 known impressions. A very rich impression p...

One of several paintings that we are offering by Henri-André Martin's. A wonderfully evocative image of an expansive beach with a figure by a sailing boat in the South of France, pai...

C.W. Mundy's "Imaginary Seascape" (2024) is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts an abstracted seascape with contrasting light and dark colors. About the Artist: C.W. Mu...

Carl Rudolph Krafft Winter Landscape with Stream Signed lower right and with thumbprint Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches Carl Rudolph Krafft was born in 1884 in Reading, Ohio, and his ...

Alexander Charles Stuart The Attack of the Merrimac Signed lower left Oil on artist board 13 3/4 x 23 1/4 inches Alexander Charles Stuart, a Scottish-born painter of ships and marin...

"Dr. Snapp House" Oil Painting Don Prechtel (born 1936, American). The historic Dr. Snapp House in Cottage Grove, Oregon was built in 1886, by one of the ...

Sunlit Field Landscape dated 1994 signed by Georges Bordonave (French contemporary) oil painting on canvas, unframed canvas: 20 x 25.5 inches condition: very good provenance: from a ...

Ford at Middle Duntisbourne [2020] Original Landscape Oil paint on canvas Image size: H:40 cm x W:40 cm Frame Size: H:54 cm x W:54 cm x D:5cm Sold Framed Please note that insitu imag...

Richard E. Miller 1875-1943 American Young Woman in Interior Signed "Miller" (lower right) Oil on canvas Richard E. Miller's Young Woman in Interior exemplifies the artist's exce...

Initialed lower left, 'J.P' for Julius Paulsen (Danish, 1860-1940) and painted circa 1910. A dramatic, early twentieth-century work by this notable Post-Impressionist painter and th...

Provenance Consigned to the gallery by private collectors Description Marion Kavanagh was a pupil of William Keith in San Francisco who, upon learning of her move to Southern California, urged her to contact Pasadena artist Elmer Wachtel. A romance blossomed and the two were married in 1904. During their marriage, out of respect for her husband, Marion Wachtel painted in watercolor, giving Elmer Wachtel the honor of painting in the more “serious” medium of oil. After the untimely passing of her husband and a period of grieving, Marion took up oil painting in 1930, working both en plein air and in the studio. This masterful plein air painting is a poetic interpretation of the snow-capped mountains in Grand Teton National Park...

Antique American impressionist landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. No signature found.

"Cape Cod Sunset" - Watercolor on Paper Colorful sunset painting by San Francisco and Provincetown artist Robert Morgan (American, 20th C). A house sits on top of a hill lit up in orange and yellow reflecting the colors of the set sky in this impressionist watercolor. Cape Cod, a popular summertime destination, sits on the hook-shaped peninsula of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Signed by the artist in the lower right corner, "Robert Morgan" Frame size: 17.5"H x 21.75"W Image size: 11.75"H x 17.25"W Info provided on the back by the artist: Robert Morgan "Cape Cod Sunset" Watercolor, 12x18", '99 Presented in a wooden frame with a light gray mat. After graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute and moving to San Francisco, Robert Morgan (American, 20th/21st Century) returned to Provincetown to study watercolor with the late Lee Boynton at the Cape Cod School of Art. He then began taking workshops at the Fine Arts Work Center with Jim Peters, Robert Henry and Gregory Amenoff, among others. He now sells his artworks through the Alden Gallery, opened by film writer and Banner Arts Editor Howard Karren and business partner, Stephen Syta, in 2007. Morgan’s subject matter is largely influenced by Provincetown, mostly consisting of men in relationship to the beach, the town and each other. Education San Francisco State University, MA (Painting), 1984 San Francisco Art Institute, 1974–76 Kansas City Art Institute, BFA, 1972 Publications “A Feeling for Light and Air and the Human Figure,” The Palette Magazine, Issue No. 12 (Dec. 2005/Jan 2006) “ArtSeen,” by Patrick King, Genre, August 1998, pp. 76-77 Awards Gold Award, Painting, Art of California Magazine, 1993 Exhibitions 2017 - Alden Gallery, “Ed Christie, Robert Morgan and Laurence Young: New Work” Alden Gallery, “Wall” Metro Pictures, New York, “Postcards from the Edge 2017” Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Members’ Juried Exhibition (curated by Sarah Johnson, Cahoon Museum of American Art) 2016 - Alden Gallery, “Robert Morgan and Sean McCabe: New Work” Alden Gallery, “Meme” 2015 - Alden Gallery, “Kevin Cyr, Raul Gonzalez...

Courtyard with Fountain - Interior Landscape in Oil on Canvas Moody interior scene by Muriel Kittock (American, 1919-1996). Against a far wall, there is an ornate bench...

The painting "Japanese Koi Carp" is made with acrylic paints and texture paste. Bright colors and volumetric effect create a sense of depth and movement. The painting will look good ...

Nicely painted 1880s European impressionist beach scene oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Very finely painted and impressive in person. Excellent ready to hang condit...

Docked Boats Simone Forge 1930's French Impressionist oil on board unframed board: 13 x 16 inches Provenance: private collection Condition: great condition For more any more info...

Peaceful landscape of sand dunes along a California beach with seagulls drifting overhead in a soft gray-blue sky, by a California artist. Signed "Noland" lower right. Presented in a...

French late 19th century Impressionist oil on board landscape. To the other side of the board is a further river landscape (see separate listing) A charming depiction of a cottage b...

This is a story about a couple of horses, rendered in the impressionist style with a palette knife. The painting tells us a story as vivid as the strokes that bring it to life. Again...

Original Watercolour of Farmhouse in the Northern Ireland Countryside by 20th Century Irish Artist, D Hall Art measures 8 x 6 inches Frame measure...

Arthur Clifton Goodwin Park Street, Boston Signed lower right Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches A painter especially known for street and waterfront scenes of Boston, Arthur Clifton Goo...

Antique panoramic landscape painting. Watercolor and gouache on board, circa 1900. Signed. Image size, 17L x 11H. Housed in a period g...

Large and very impressive sunset view of Florence Italy. Great colors and perspective in this piece. Signed illegibly on back and located as the "Ponte Santa Trinita". Framed in a...

Francis Henry Richardson Open Pasture, Winter Signed lower right Oil on board 10 3/8 x 13 inches Richardson, born in Boston, entered the formal art world in his late twenties. His ...

Published in a monographic catalogue Georgij MOROZ (Dneprodzerzinsk, Ucraina, 1937 - St. Petersburg, 2015) 1937: he was born in Dneprodzerzinsk, Ucraina. 1949-56: he began artistic...

Quang Ho's "A Cowboy and His Friend" (2024) is a beautiful impressionist painting that depicts a cowboy riding his horse through a forest in dim sunlight. About the artist: Quang Ho...

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 25 x 30 Frame Size: 34 x 39 Medium: Oil on Canvas Circa 1950 "Lazy Day Blues" Texas Bluebonnet 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 is 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...

Preliminary Drawing for the color aquatint "New Orlaens, Street Gossip" Signed by the artist in pencil lower left Graphite on tracing paper, 1916-1917 An impr...

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...