Charles Morin Fine Art

Jose Vives-Atsara (1919-2004) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 30 x 40 Frame Size: 38.75 x 48.75 Medium: Oil on Panel Applied by Palette Knife Dated 1977-1978 "Sunset" Costa Brava Spai...

Margaret Putnam (1913-1989) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 25.5 x 49 Frame Size: 28.5 x 52.5 Medium: Multimedia on Paper "St. Francis of Assisi" Margaret Putnam (1913-1989) Margaret ...

Charles Schorre 1925-1996 Texas Image Size: 22 x 30 Frame Size: 27 x 35.5 Medium: Watercolor on Paper "Red Wing" Biography Charles Schorre 1925-1996 Charles Schorre (1925 - 1996) was...

P. L. Hohnstedt (Peter Lanz) (1872 - 1957) San Antonio, Comfort Artist Image Size: 12 x 16 Medium: Oil Circa 1930s "Texas Summer" Hill Country Biography P. L. Hohnstedt (Peter Lanz) ...

David Sanders (1933-2013) Austin Artist Image Size: 30 x 40 Frame Size: 40 x 50 Medium: "Pastel" "Along the Nueces" David Sanders (1933-2013) Known for his oil pastel landscapes, Dav...

Paul Schumann 1876-1946 Galveston Artist Image Size: 16 x 20 Frame Size: 21.5 x 25.5 Medium: Oil on Board "Afternoon on the Bay" Paul Schumann was born near Leipzig Saxony, in the G...

Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Houston Artist Size: 13.75 x 17.5 Frame: 20.25 x 24.25 Medium: Charcoal on Draft Paper "Dallas" Cityscape Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Edward Muegge Schiwetz w...

Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Houston Artist Size: 10 x 15.5 Frame: 16.5 x 22 Medium: Charcoal on Paper unsigned from the collection of a Schiwetz Family Member. 1961 "Dallas" Cityscape....

Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Houston Artist Image Size: 13.75 x 17.5 Framed Size: 20.25 x 24.25 Medium: Charcoal on Draft Paper "Dallas" Cityscape Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Edward Muegg...

ohnny Banks (1912-1988) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 11 x 14 Frame Size: 17.75 x 20.75 Medium: Multimedia on Paper "Mountain Home" Biography Johnny Banks (1912-1988) In my opinion ...

Johnny Banks (1912-1988) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 10.5 x 17 Frame Size: 20.5 x 16.5 Medium: Mixed Media on poster board Dated 1987 "Thanksgiving" Biography Johnny Banks (1912-1...

Julian Onderdonk (1882 - 1922) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 20 x 30 Frame Size: 29 x 39 Medium: Oil on Canvas 1921 "A Road in Late Afternoon" This painting is so magnificent that ...

James Robinson (1944-2015) Austin, Dallas, Houston Artist Image Size: 24 x 36 Frame Size: 32 x 44 Medium: Acrylic on Canvas Clearly signed lower left quadrant about an inch above the...

Frank Hoffman (1888-1958) New Mexico, Illinois Artist Image Size: 27 x 41 Frame Size: 37 x 50 Medium: Oil Circa 1930s - 1940s "The Encounter" Indian & Bear Frank Hoffman (1888-1958) Growing up in New Orleans where his father raced horses, Frank Hoffman developed a great love for these animals, which was reflected in his paintings. He worked as an illustrator for the "Chicago American" newspaper, which gave him an opportunity to draw many subjects from opera to prize fights, and eventually he became head of the department. During that time, he took formal art training from J. Wellington Reynolds, a portrait painter. In 1916, having been rejected for military service because of poor eyesight, he went West and lived with cowboys and Indian tribes and served as public relations director for Glacier National Park. Eventually he settled on a ranch near Taos, New Mexico, and became part of that art colony and studied with Leon Gaspard, who encouraged him to use color freely. Advertisers including General Motors, General Electric, and the Great Northern Railway hired him because they loved his bold, broad brush work and striking colors. He also did magazine illustrations, specializing in western subjects. Because of the spaciousness of his ranch that he called Hobby Horse Rancho, he kept live models of cow ponies, thoroughbred horses, longhorn steers, several breeds of dogs, eagles, a bear and burros. From 1940 Brown & Bigelow Publishing Company of St. Paul, Minnesota had him under exclusive contract, and during the next 14 years, he produced 150 paintings for that company. Source: Walt Reed, The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000 Known as a traditional Western illustrator, painter and sculptor, Frank Hoffman was born in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up around his father's New Orleans, Louisiana, racing stables. Through a family friend, Hoffman was hired to make sketches for the Chicago American, later becoming head of the art department. While working for the paper, he had five years of formal art training in private lessons from J. Wellington Reynolds, a portrait painter. In 1916, Hoffman went West to paint, living with the Indian tribes and the cowboys. During that time, he also worked as public relations director for Glacier National Park, where he met noted artist John Singer Sargent. In 1920, Hoffman joined the young art colony in Taos, New Mexico. He studied with Leon Gaspard, learning the use of color. Although focusing on his fine art, Hoffman also painted for corporate advertising campaigns and illustrated Western subjects for the leading national magazines in the 1920's. Hoffman became the best-known New Mexico illustrator of the time. As his success grew, he bought his own Hobby Horse Rancho, where he raised quarter horses and kept as live models the longhorns, dogs, eagles, burros, and even a bear that he had begun to sculpt in the 1930's. Later, beginning with 1940, Hoffman was under exclusive contract to Brown and...

Bob Wygant (1927 - 2008) Houston Artist Image Size: 20 x 30 Frame Size: 28 x 38 Medium: Acrylic on Masonite "Pale Morning Mist" Bob Wygant (1927 - 2008) A T...

Alexander John Drysdale (1870-1934) New Orleans Louisiana / New York Artist Size: 20 x 30 Frame: 26 x 36 Medium: Oil Wash? Watercolor? Dated: 1917 "Misty Bayou" Housed in the original magnificent frame. Alexander John Drysdale (1870-1934) New Orleans Louisiana / New York Artist Alexander John (A.J.) Drysdale was an early 20th century Louisiana artist who specialized in landscapes using the technique of oil wash, that gave his works a characteristic of a hazy look. Drysdale made use of this technique by diluting the oil paint with kerosene and applying it with cotton balls. Alexander John Drysdale, born in Marietta, Georgia on March 2, 1870, came to New Orleans at the age of fifteen with his parents. His father, Reverend Alexander J. Drysdale, became the rector of Christ Church Cathedral. Alex received private tutoring from a Professor Mehado and art lessons from Ida Hackell at the Southern Art Union. Later in New Orleans (1887) he studied art under Paul Poincy (1833-1909). The exact date of Drysdale's arrival in New York is unknown, but he enrolled in the Art Students League where he received instruction from Charles C. Curran and Frank Vincent DuMond. Apparently, he remained in New York for about five years and did not go to Europe for further study. After some time, Drysdale began specializing in landscapes, executed in a tonalist manner. Back in New Orleans, Drysdale was inspired by local subjects, especially swamp or bayou areas and other desolate wetlands. Over a period of many years Drysdale's landscapes evolved to a unique stylistic maturity. In 1909 he received a gold medal from the New Orleans Art Association. It is easy to see the influence of two artists that he admired: Corot and Inness. Working equally well in oil and watercolor (he also did scenes in charcoal), Drysdale usually divided his scene into halves or thirds, typically, a foreground consisting of tall swamp grasses achieved with broad vertical strokes; a middle ground consisting of a backdrop row of trees at the horizon line executed with staccato, jabbing strokes resulting in textural contrast; and a background devoted totally to a tonalist-like moisture-laden sky often hazy with no clouds or only a slight indication of them. This formulaic compositional format rendered with an economy of technique resulted in imagery with repetitious forms and shapes diffused in a nebulous space. In this regard, Drysdale's works are impressionistic; he also tended to use the violets and blues of the impressionist palette. Yet he lacked a specific interest in color and light. Although his expression of the Louisiana scenery is very personal, even mystical, the artist appears to have been very limited in subject matter. One of his last works was a mural for the Shushan (New York) Airport administration building, and shortly before his death he was employed as an artist by the Civil Works Administration. Drysdale was a member of the Arts and Crafts Club of New Orleans, and his work was in the permanent collection of the Delgado Museum for many years. The artist worked at his studio at 320 Exchange Place in the picturesque Vieux Carré until his death at the age of sixty-three. Stewart (in Painting in the South, 1983), describes how Drysdale was a shrewd businessman. He would solicit new homeowners who might need a canvas to decorate a wall, or a cotton broker who recently made the headlines. Drysdale died in New Orleans, on February 9, 1934. Sources: Louisiana Artists from the Collection of Dr. and Mrs. James W. Nelson. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1968; Wiesendanger, Martin and Margaret Wiesendanger, Nineteenth Century Louisiana Painters and Paintings from the Collection of W. E. Groves. New Orleans: W. E. Groves Gallery, 1971, pp. 44-45; Painting in the South: 1584-1980, Exh. cat. Richmond, VA: Virginia Museum, 1983, pp. 106-107, 114, 276; Chambers, Bruce W., Art and Artists of the South: The Robert P. Coggins Collection of American Paintings. Exh. cat. Rochester, NY: Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 1984, p. 88; Zellman, Michael David, 300 Years of American Art. Seacacus, NJ: Wellfleet Press, 1987, p. 634; Gerdts, William H., Art across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting, 1710-1920. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990, vol. 2, pp. 110-111. Submitted by Richard H. Love and Michael Preston Worley, Ph.D. Biography from The Johnson Collection ALEXANDER JOHN DRYSDALE (1870–1934) Born in Marietta, Georgia, Alexander John Drysdale was the only son of an ordained Episcopal priest whose ministry required frequent moves to parishes in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. In 1883, he accepted the call to become dean of Christ Church Cathedral, New Orleans, and was later elected a bishop. Alexander, thirteen years old when the family settled in New Orleans, began his art studies under the instruction of Ida C. Haskell, a California-born artist who was on the faculty of the recently established Southern Art Union. The local academy had been founded by several leading artists, including Andres Molinary, William Henry Buck...

Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Houston Artist Image Size: 10.5 x 14 Frame Size: 17 x 20.5 Medium: Watercolor on Paper Dated 1946 "Talco School" High School Talco Texas Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Edward Muegge Schiwetz was a painter whose work recorded the state of Texas from the country to the city. In addition, Schiwetz was a magazine illustrator, graphic artist, writer, preservationist, and architect.Edward Schiwetz was born and raised in Cuero, Texas and learned to draw and paint under the instruction of his mother. He graduated from Cuero High School (1916) and received a baccalaureate in architecture from Texas A & M college, College Station...

Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Houston Artist Image Size: 11.25 x 13.5 Frame Size: 17.75 x 19.5 Medium: Watercolor on Paper Dated 1951 "Powerlines" Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Edward Muegge Schiwetz was a painter whose work recorded the state of Texas from the country to the city. In addition, Schiwetz was a magazine illustrator, graphic artist, writer, preservationist, and architect.Edward Schiwetz was born and raised in Cuero, Texas and learned to draw and paint under the instruction of his mother. He graduated from Cuero High School (1916) and received a baccalaureate in architecture from Texas A & M college, College Station...

Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Houston Artist Image Size: 9 x 11.75 Frame Size: 15.25 x 17.75 Medium: Watercolor on Paper "Oil Field" Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Edward Muegge Schiwetz was a painter whose work recorded the state of Texas from the country to the city. In addition, Schiwetz was a magazine illustrator, graphic artist, writer, preservationist, and architect.Edward Schiwetz was born and raised in Cuero, Texas and learned to draw and paint under the instruction of his mother. He graduated from Cuero High School (1916) and received a baccalaureate in architecture from Texas A & M college, College Station...

Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Houston Artist Image Size: 10 x 15.5 Framed Size: 16.5 x 22 Medium: Pencil/charcoal on Paper Unsigned from his estate "Dallas" Cityscape Buck Schiwetz (1898-1984) Dallas Skyline by E. M. “Buck” Schiwetz — 1961 by Paula Bosse This drawing reminds me of those wonderful telephone book covers (the ones with all the hidden jokes and intricate details) that I used to pore over as a child. (By the way, when clicked, this image is absolutely HUMONGOUS.) From the booklet Five Years Forward: The Dallas Public Library, 1955-1960 (more of which can be accessed here). Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved. Edward Muegge Schiwetz was a painter whose work recorded the state of Texas from the country to the city. In addition, Schiwetz was a magazine illustrator, graphic artist, writer, preservationist, and architect. Edward Schiwetz was born and raised in Cuero, Texas and learned to draw and paint under the instruction of his mother. He graduated from Cuero High School (1916) and received a baccalaureate in architecture from Texas A & M college, College Station...

Gary Ray 1952 California Artist Image Size: 24 x 30 Frame Size: 33 x 39 Medium: Oil on Board Dated 2004 "California Poppies" Biography Gary Ray 1952 Gary Ray ...

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...

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...

Robert Harrison (Born 1949) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 36 x 48 Frame Size: 44 x 56 Medium: Oil on canvas Dated 1999 "Coreopsis & Daggers" Texas Hill Country. Wildflowers Biograph...

John William Hilton (1904 - 1983) California Artist Image Size: 18 x 24 Frame Size: 26.5 x 32.5 Medium: Oil on Panel "Navajo Medicine Man" Biography John William Hilton (1904 - 1983) Born in Carrington, North Dakota, John Hilton is known for desert landscape painting as well as scenes with cowboys, horses, and cattle. He was also a poet, musician, geologist, miner, and entertainer. His father was a baker, and the family lived in a shack on a farm. When he was four, he went to China with his mother and father, who became a missionary. There he met Chinese bandits, philosophers, and walked along the Great Wall by the time he was age 10. The family was separated during the Sun Yat Sen revolution, and thinking the father was dead, the mother returned to North Dakota where the father eventually found them. John moved to Los Angeles in 1918 and worked for a gem company, but it folded during the Depression. Then he designed jewelry for Hollywood film stars and sold stones world wide. In the 1930s, financially broke, he moved to the desert determined to become a painter and supporting himself as a singer and guitar player. He also operated a curio shop near Indio, California, and from that time lived either in the desert or at Twenty-Nine Palms. Sketching trips with Maynard Dixon, Nicolai Fechin, Jimmy...

Paul Grimm (1891-1974) California Artist Image Size: 24 x 30 Frame Size: 31 x 37 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dated 1953 "Pala Mission" The San Antonio de Pala Asistencia, or the "Pala Mission", was founded on June 13, 1816, as an asistencia or "sub-mission" to Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, some twenty miles inland upstream from the latter mission on the San Luis Rey River. Pala Mission was part of the Spanish missions, asistencias, and estancias system in Las Californias—Alta California. Today it is located in the Pala Indian Reservation located in northern San Diego County, with the official name of Mission San Antonio de Pala.[2][4] It is the only historic mission facility still serving a Mission Indian tribe. Pala (a derivation of the native term Pale, meaning water) was essentially a small rancho surrounded by large fields and herds. The Pala site had been noted by Father Juan Mariner and Captain Juan Pablo Grijalva on an exploratory trip in 1795, when they went up the San Diego River, and then through Sycamore Canyon to the Santa Maria Valley (or Pamó Valley) and into what they named El Valle de San José, now known as Warner Springs. Once Mission San Luis Rey began to prosper, it attracted the attention of numerous mountain Native Americans in the area, who were called the Luiseño by the Spanish. Spanish era The Franciscan fathers chose this site for the Pala Mission because it was a traditional gathering place and village for the Native American residents. Father Peyrí oversaw the addition of a chapel and housing to the granary complex, which was constructed at the spot in 1810.[4] The chapel's interior wall surfaces featured paintings by native artists, originally measuring 144 by 27 feet. Workers went into the Palomar Mountains and cut down cedar trees to use as roof beams.[5] Pala is unique among all of the Franciscan missions in that it boasts the only completely freestanding campanile, or "bell tower," in all of Alta California. By 1820, some 1,300 baptisms had been performed at the outpost.[6] Folk tales about the mission include mention of a prickly pear cactus, which became a local symbol of Christian victory, that grew up at the foot of the cross.[7] Mexican era After the nation achieved independence from Spain, the Mexican Congress passed An Act for the Secularization of the Missions of California on August 17, 1833 (the act was ratified in 1834).[8] Father Buenaventura Fortuna surrendered Mission San Luis Rey and all its holdings, including Las Flores Estancia and the Pala Asistencia, to government comisianados (commissioners) Pío Pico and Pablo de la Portillà on August 22, 1835; the assessed value of "Rancho de Pala" was $15,363.25.[9] More than a decade later, fearful of the impending conquest of Alta California by the United States as a result of the Mexican–American War...

Barbara Mauldin Fredericksburg Artist Image Size: 15 x 30 Frame Size: 22 x 36 Medium: Oil on canvas "Willow City Still Life" Texas Hill Country Landscape Barbara and her husband Chu...

Robert Harrison (Born 1949) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 30 x 40 Frame Size: 38 x 48 Medium: Oil on Canvas "As Blue As it Gets" Texas Hill Country Bluebonnets Biography Robert Harr...

Robert Harrison (Born 1949) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 36 x 48 Frame Size: 44 x 56 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dated 2007 "Summers Gold" Texas Hill Country. Exhibited Lady Bird Johnson...

Robert Harrison (Born 1949) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 30 x 40 Frame Size: 40 X 50 Medium: Oil on Canvas "Coreopsis and Cacti" Texas Hill Country Biography Robert Harrison (Born ...

Robert Harrison (Born 1949) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 24 x 30 Frame Size: 30 x 36 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dated 2010 "A Texas Trail" Hill Country Blooming Prickly Pear Cactus Biog...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 18 x 24 Frame Size: 25 x 31 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dated 1967 "Rough Coast" Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I was always curious abo...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 24 x 36 Frame Size: 30.5 x 42.5 Medium: Oil "Hill Country Creek" Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I was always curious about Pedro L...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 8 x 10 Frame Size: 15.75 x 17.75 Medium: Oil "Bluebonnet Hills" Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I was always curious about Pedro La...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 12 x 16 Frame Size: 17.25 x 21.25 Medium: Oil "Bluebonnet Hill Top" Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I was always curious about Pedr...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 18 x 24 Frame Size: 25.5 x 31.5 Medium: Oil "Bluebonnet Path" Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I was always curious about Pedro Lazc...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 20 x 24 Frame Size: 27.25 x 31.25 Medium: Oil "Hill Country Home" Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I was always curious about Pedro ...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 16 x 20 Frame Size: 24.75 x 28.75 Medium: Oil "Long View" Texas Hill Country Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I was always curious a...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 18 x 24 Frame Size: 25.5 x 31.5 Medium: Oil "Watering Hole" Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I was always curious about Pedro Lazcan...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 16 x 20 Frame Size: 23 x 27 Medium: Oil on Canvas "Bluebonnet and Huisache" Texas Hill Country Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I wa...

Fred Darge (1900-1978) Dallas Image Size: 18 x 24 Frame Size: 27.5 x 33.5 Medium: Oil on Board "Approaching Storm" Biography Fred Darge (1900-1978) Friedrich Ernst Darge Born: March ...

Manuel Garza (Born 1949) Texas Artist Image Size: 9 x 12 Frame Size: 15.25 x 18.25 Medium: Oil on Canvas "Bluebonnet Fence" Biography Manuel Garza (Born 1949) Growing up in Central T...

Carl Hoppe 1897-1981 San Antonio Artist Image Size: 22 x 36 Frame Size: 26.25 x 40.25 Medium: Oil on Canvas "Creek in Leon Valley" Biography Carl Hoppe 1897-1981 Carl Thomas Hoppe...

Eric Harrison (Born 1971) Texas Hill Country Artist Image Size: 48 x 72 Frame Size: 61 x 86 Medium: Acrylic on Canvas "Summer's Beckoning" Bio Eric H...

Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 20 x 24 Frame Size: 29 x 32 Medium: Oil on Canvas "West Texas" Ranching Pedro Lazcano (1909-1970) I was always curious about ...

Don Crowley (1926-2019) Arizona / California Western Artist Image Size: 11 x 13 Frame Size: 18 x 20 Medium: Gouache Study "After Glow" Indian Girl with her...

Don Crowley (1926-2019) Arizona / California Western Artist Image Size: 20 x 24 Frame Size: 33 x 37 Medium: Oil "The Seamstress" Indian Weaver Native Ameri...

John Austin Hanna Born 1942 Fredericksburg Artist Image Size: 24 x 48 Frame Size: 28 x 52 Medium: Oil on Canvas Mercedes Benz 300SL "Gullwing" Coupe Ralph Lauren's personal vehicle Biography John Austin Hanna Born 1942 John Austin Hanna - Fredericksburg, Texas John graduated from Texas Tech University with a degree in Advertising Art & Design. As a 20-year illustrator in New York and Dallas he has been published in several magazines such as Automotive Quarterly, Car and Driver, Saga, Town & Country, Flying, Popular Boating, and Popular Science. He has also done work for several large corporations such as Mercedes, Volkswagen, Bell Helicopter, Lockheed Martin, Borden’s, Pearl Beer...

Palmer Chrisman (1913 - 1984) Austin Artist Image Size: 20 x 24 Frame Size: 25 x 29 Medium: Oil "Path in the Hills" Texas Hill Country Palmer Chrisman (1913 - 1984) Palmer Chrisman ...

Lester Hughes (1938-2021) El Paso Artist Image Size: 24 x 36 Frame Size: 30 x 42 Medium: Oil "Lost and Found" West Texas Cattle STRAYS Biography Lester Hughes (1938-2021) From El Pas...

Ward Lockwood (1894 - 1963) New Mexico, Texas, Kansas / Mexico Artist Image Size: 12 x 16 Frame Size: 17.75 x 21.75 Medium: Charcoal "Siesta By The Oven" Biography Ward Lockwood (1894 - 1963) Born in Atchison, Kansas, Ward Lockwood became a key painter in the Taos, New Mexico art colony, but diverse modernist art styles including Expressionism*, Cubism*, Surrealism* and Constructivism* reflected his wide ranging travels in Europe and the United States. From the 1920s to the 1960s, his work embraced a series of stylistic changes characteristic of people who influenced him, including John Marin and Andrew Dasburg. He studied at the University of Kansas, and from 1914 to 1917 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts* where he was introduced to Modernism*. In 1917, he began a two-year enlistment in the Army and served in France, and in 1921, a return visit to France led to his being influenced by Paul Cezanne and Vincent Van Gogh. During this time, he studied in Paris at the Academie Ranson*, but got bored with the academic climate of that school and spent time at the Louvre and galleries along the Rue de la Boetie. He painted from local models and traveled around France with fellow Kansan, Kenneth Adams. He was much impressed with the diversity of contemporary art movements including Futurism*, Cubism, and Dadaism*. His work from this period shows influences of Geometric Abstraction* and Impressionism. In 1922, he returned to Kansas, committed to the idea that an artist does best painting in his own culture. He worked as a commercial artist and also did portrait commissions. In 1926, he and his wife, artist Clyde Bonebrake, moved to Taos, New Mexico because of his friendship with Kenneth Adams, who was already established there. Lockwood became interested in the Taos Society of Artists...

Joe G. Russel (1926-2008) Kerrville Artist Image Size: 24 x 36 Frame Size: 31.5 x 43.5 Medium: Oil "Windmill in the Hills" Texas Hill Country Joe G. Russell (1926-2008) He was born i...

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...

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...

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

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...

Julian Onderdonk (1882 - 1922) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 6 x 9 Frame Size: 10.75 x 13.75 Medium: Oil Dated 1910 "A Glowing Sky" SW Texas Julian Onderdonk (1882 - 1922) Known as...

Herb Booth (1942 - 2014) Texas Artist Image Size: 29 x 41 Frame Size: 39 x 51 Medium: Watercolor "Waterfowl" Geese, ducks, more Herb Booth (1942 - 2014) Wat...

Jose Vives-Atsara (1919-2004) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 24 x 30 Frame Size: 34 x 39 Medium: Oil Applied by Palette Knife Dated 1981 "Houses on the Hills" , Catalonia, Spain Biog...

Jose Vives-Atsara (1919-2004) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 16 x 20 Frame Size: 25 x 29 Medium: Oil Applied by Palette Knife Dated 1967 "Farm Road, Spain" Biography Jose Vives-Atsar...