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"AS BLUE AS IT GETS" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY BLUEBONNETS 38 X 48 FRAMED!
By Robert Harrison
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
Early 2000s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"SUMMERS GOLD" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY EXHIBITED LADY BIRD JOHNSON WILDFLOWER
By Robert Harrison
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
Early 2000s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"COREOPSIS & DAGGERS" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY WILDFLOWERS 44 X 56 FRAMED WOW!
By Robert Harrison
Located in San Antonio, TX
Robert Harrison
(Born 1949)
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 36 x 48
Frame Size: 44 x 56
Medium: Oil
Dated 1999
"Coreopsis & Daggers" Texas Hill Country. Wildflowers
Biography
Robert H...
Category
1990s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNETS VALLEY" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 31 X 55 BORN 1949 HEAVY IMPASTO
By Robert Harrison
Located in San Antonio, TX
Robert Harrison
(Born 1949)
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 24 x 48
Frame Size: 31.25 x 55.25
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"Bluebonnet Valley" Texas Hill Country
Biography
Robert Harrison (B...
Category
Early 2000s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNETS IN BLOOM" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 22 X 26 BORN 1949 HEAVY IMPASTO
By Robert Harrison
Located in San Antonio, TX
Robert Harrison
(Born 1949)
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 16 x 20
Frame Size: 21.5 x 25.5
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"Bluebonnets in Bloom"
Biography
Robert Harrison (Born 1949)
Robert H...
Category
Early 2000s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"COREOPSIS & CACTI" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY WILDFLOWERS 40 X 50 FRAMED BORN 1949
By Robert Harrison
Located in San Antonio, TX
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 ...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"A TEXAS TRAIL" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAME 30 x 36 BLOOMING PRICKLY PEAR BORN 1949
By Robert Harrison
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"ROUGH COAST" SEASCAPE SHORELINE FRAMED 25 X 31
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"HILL COUNTRY CREEK" TEXAS AUTUMN FRAMED 30.5 X 42.5
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNET HILL" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 15.75 X 17.75
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNET HILLTOP" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 17.25 X 21.25
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNET PATH WITH HUISACHE" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 25.5 X 31.5
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"HILL COUNTRY HOME" TEXAS FRAMED 27.25 X 31.25 TEXAS HILL COUNTRY
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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 ...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"LONG VIEW" TEXAS LAKES AND COUNTRYSIDE FRAMED 24.75 X 28.75 Texas Hill Country
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"WATERING HOLE" TEXAS 25.5 X 31.5
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNET AND HUISACHE" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 23 X 27
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"VALLEY OF THE MONUMENTS" NAVAJO ARIZONA / UTAH HERDERS
By Marjorie Reed
Located in San Antonio, TX
Marjorie Reed a.k.a. Harvey Day
(1915-1996)
California, Arizona Artist
Size: 18 x 24
Frame: 23.25 x 29.25
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"Valley of the Monuments"
Marjorie Reed Biography
Biog...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"WHEN EVENING COMES" NAVAJOS ARIZONA / CALIFORNIA
By Marjorie Reed
Located in San Antonio, TX
Marjorie Reed a.k.a. Harvey Day
(1915-1996)
California, Arizona Artist
Image Size: 11 X 14
Frame Size: 17 x 20
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"When Evening Comes"
Biography
Marjorie Reed a.k....
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"STAGING ON THE SOUTHERN ARIZONA TRAIL" STAGECOACH ARIZONA / CALIFORNIA
By Marjorie Reed
Located in San Antonio, TX
Marjorie Reed a.k.a. Harvey Day
(1915-1996)
California, Arizona Artist
Image Size: 16 X 20
Frame Size: 22 X 26
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"Valley of the Monuments"
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"SUNSET ON THE OLD STAGE TRAIL" STAGECOACH SCENE. CALIFORNIA / ARIZONA VIBRANT
By Marjorie Reed
Located in San Antonio, TX
Marjorie Reed a.k.a. Harvey Day
(1915-1996)
California, Arizona Artist
Image Size: 16 x 20
Frame Size: 22 x 28
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"SUNSET ON THE OLD STAGE TRAIL"
Marjorie Reed Bio...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"HAPPY STAGING" STAGECOACH FRAMED 18.5 X 22.5
By Marjorie Reed
Located in San Antonio, TX
Marjorie Reed a.k.a. Harvey Day
(1915-1996)
California, Arizona Artist
Image Size: 18 x 24
Frame Size: 23.25 x 29.25
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"Valley of the Monuments"
Biography
Marjor...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"SPRINGTIME" CATALONIA SPAIN FRAMED 20 X 23
By Jose Vives-Atsara
Located in San Antonio, TX
Jose Vives-Atsara
(1919-2004)
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 9 x 12
Frame Size: 20 x 23
Medium: Oil Applied by Palette Knife on Canvas
Dated 1982
"Springtime" Catalonia, Spain
Biogra...
Category
1980s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"APPROCHING STORM" WESTERN FRAMED 27.5 X 33.5
Located in San Antonio, TX
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 ...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"OLD FARM PLACE" FRAMED 15.5 X 19.5
By Frank Klepper
Located in San Antonio, TX
Frank Klepper
(1890 - 1952)
McKinney / Dallas Artist
Image Size: 10 x 14
Frame Size: 15.5 x 19.5
Medium: Oil on Board
"Old Farm Place"
Biography
Frank Klepper (1890 - 1952)
Frank Ear...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNET FENCE" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 15.25 X 18.25
By Manuel Garza
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNET TRAIL" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY 36.75 X 46.75
Located in San Antonio, TX
W.R. Thrasher
(1908 - 1997)
Texas Artist
Image Size: 30 x 40
Frame Size: 36.75 x 46.75
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"Bluebonnet Trail"
Biography
W.R. Thrasher (1908 - 1997)
The state of Tex...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"CREEK IN LEON VALLEY" SAN ANTONIO TEXAS FRAMED 26.25 X 40.25
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"OAKS AND BLUEBONNET" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 23 X 29
Located in San Antonio, TX
Royce Roberts
(1928-2016)
Burnet, Texas
Image Size: 18 x 24
Frame Size: 23 x 29
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"Oaks and Bluebonnets"
Biography
Royce Roberts (192...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"'BLUEBONNET FIELDS" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 29.5 X 41.5
By Dwight Holmes
Located in San Antonio, TX
Dwight Holmes
(1900-1986)
Fort Worth, San Angelo Artist
Image Size: 24 x 36
Frame Size: 29.5 x 41.5
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dated 1976
"Bluebonnet Fields"
Biography
Dwight Holmes (190...
Category
1970s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"THE TEXAS WAY" HILL COUNTRY James Robinson (1944-2015) LONGHORNS FRAME 48 X 60
By James Robinson
Located in San Antonio, TX
James Robinson
(1944-2015)
Austin, Dallas, Houston Artist
Image Size: 40 x 60
Frame Size: 48 x 68
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
"The Texas Way" Texas Hill Country I can ship this item. ...
Category
20th Century American Realist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Acrylic
"Summer's Beckoning" Huge 61 x 86 Framed Texas Prickly Pear Cactus & Mesquite
By Eric Harrison
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
2010s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Acrylic
"WEST TEXAS RANCHING" HEREFORD CATTLE. RARE SUBJECT BY LAZCANO (1909-1970) HERD
By Pedro Lazcano
Located in San Antonio, TX
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 ...
Category
1960s Impressionist Animal Paintings
Materials
Oil
"AFTER GLOW" NATIVE AMERICAN GIRL W/DOLL (1926-2019) Arizona / California
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
Early 1900s Realist Figurative Paintings
Materials
Gouache
"THE SEAMSTRESS" NATIVE AMERICAN GIRL COWBOY ARTISTS OF AMERICA. INDIAN
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
Early 2000s Realist Figurative Paintings
Materials
Oil
"GULLWING MERCEDES 300 SL COUPE". PAINTING OF RALPH LAUREN'S ALUMINUM GULLWING
By John Austin Hanna
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"FRESH FLOWERS" MEXICAN FLOWER VENDOR GOING TO MARKET 51 X 41 FRAMED
By John Austin Hanna
Located in San Antonio, TX
John Austin Hanna
Born 1942
Fredericksburg Artist
Image Size: 40 x 30
Frame Size: 51 x 41
Medium: Oil on Canvas
1996
"Fresh Flowers"
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...
Category
20th Century American Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"A PATH IN THE HILLS OF TEXAS" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY Framed: 25 x 29
Located in San Antonio, TX
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 ...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"LOST AND FOUND" CATTLE STRAYS IN WEST TEXAS. WESTERN COWBOY COWS. FRAME 30 X 42
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1970s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"MOVE ALONG" CATTLE IN WEST TEXAS. WESTERN COWBOY, COWS, HORSES, MOUNTAINS
Located in San Antonio, TX
Lester Hughes
(1938-2021)
El Paso Artist
Image Size: 15 x 30
Frame Size: 21 x 36
Medium: Oil
"Move Along" Herding Cattle West Texas
Biography
Lester Hughes (1938-2021)
From El Paso, ...
Category
1970s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNETS IN THE HILLS" FRAME SIZE 32 X 38 TEXAS HILL COUNTRY LANDSCAPE
Located in San Antonio, TX
W.R. Thrasher
(1908 - 1997)
Texas Artist
Image Size: 24 x 30
Frame Size: 32 x 38
Medium: Oil
"Bluebonnets in the Hills" Texas Hill Country
Biography
W.R. Thrasher (1908 - 1997)
The s...
Category
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"LIFE IS A STRUGGLE" PRICKLY PEAR CACTUS TEXAS HILL COUNTRY FRAMED 34 X 30
Located in San Antonio, TX
Barbara Mauldin
Fredericksburg Artist
Image Size: 24 x 20
Frame Size: 34 x 30
Medium: Oil
"Life is a Struggle" Blooming Prickly Pear Cactus Texas Hill Country
Barbara and her husband Chuck moved to Fredericksburg in 2005 after living many years in Louisiana, where she taught art at Baton Rouge Lutheran School. Soon after moving home to Texas, she began painting seriously. She has studied with Ian Roberts, Kevin Macpherson, Jill Carver...
Category
2010s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"COUNTRYSIDE WINDMILL" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY LANDSCAPE WINDMILL STOCK TANK & MORE
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
20th Century American Realist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"ABSTRACT CHURCH TOWER"
By Lamar Briggs
Located in San Antonio, TX
Lamar Briggs
(1935-2015)
Houston Artist
Image Size: 14 x 11
Frame Size: 22.75 x 19.75
Medium: Oil
"Church Tower"
Lamar Briggs (1935-2015)
Following is an obituary of the artist, publ...
Category
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"HOUSTON SUNSET" TEXAS MID CENTURY MODERN LANDSCAPE LAMAR BRIGGS (1935-2015)
By Lamar Briggs
Located in San Antonio, TX
Lamar Briggs
(1935-2015)
Houston Artist
Image Size: 8 x 10
Frame Size: 17 x 19
Medium: Oil
"Houston Sunset"
Lamar Briggs (1935-2015)
Following is an obituary of the artist, published...
Category
Mid-20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"DOUBLE DAM AREA" FT. WORTH TEXAS FORT WORTH TEXAS IN SNOW.
By Dwight Holmes
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNETS WEST OF COPPERAS COVE TEXAS"
By Dwight Holmes
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1960s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BLUEBONNET TRAIL" TEXAS HILL COUNTRY
Located in San Antonio, TX
Palmer Chrisman
(1913 - 1984)
Austin Artist
Image Size: 18 x 24
Frame Size: 26 x 32
Medium: Oil
"Bluebonnet Trial" Texas Hill Country
Palmer Chrisman (1913 - 1984)
Palmer Chrisman be...
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"AUTUMN HOME" SUNSET
Located in San Antonio, TX
John Dudley
Image Size: 13.25 x 25.25
Frame Size: 20.25 x 32.25
Medium: Watercolor
"Autumn home"
Category
20th Century Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Watercolor
"PRICKLY PEAR PATH " TEXAS HILL COUNTRY CACTUS Frame Size: 21 x 25
By Porfirio Salinas
Located in San Antonio, TX
Porfirio Salinas
(1910-1973)
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 12 x 16
Frame Size: 21 x 25
Medium: Oil
Dated 1958
"Prickly Pear Path" Texas Hill Country
Biography
Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973)
Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Texas with an emphasis on the vast bluebonnet fields that grow there in the springtime. Born in 1910 in Bastrop, Texas, he attended public schools in San Antonio. He also observed works in progress by the director of the San Antonio Art School, Jose Arpa, as well as landscape painter, Robert Wood. Wood is said to have paid Salinas five dollars a picture to paint bluebonnets because "he hated to paint bluebonnets". Salinas served in the military from 1943 to 1945. Although he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, he was allowed to live at home. At the fort, Colonel Telesphor Gottchalk assigned him to paint murals for the officer's lounge and various other projects, and Salinas continued to be able to paint during his entire conscripted period. Even before he achieved notoriety among galleries, dealers, and museums, Salinas was widely followed and appreciated by many Texans, including former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who may be considered responsible for launching Salinas popularity beyond the boundaries of Texas. In 1973, Texas capital, Austin, honored Salinas for having "done much to bring the culture of Mexico and Texas closer together with his paintings". Salinas died in April 1973 in San Antonio, Texas.
From
the years of the Great Depression through President Lyndon Johnson's
Great Society of the 1960s, Texan Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) remained
one of the Lone Star State's most popular artists. Today, his works
remain popular with Texas collectors and those who love landscapes of
the beautiful "Hill Country" that lies in the center of the
state. One of the first Mexican-American painters to become
widely recognized for his art, Salinas was a favorite of President
Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, as well as of Sam
Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House of Representatives,
and Texas Governor John Connelly. In fact, President Johnson was so
enamored with his Salinas paintings that the artist will forever be
associated with America's first Texas-born President. Works by Porfirio
Salinas are in a number of museum collections, grace the halls of the
Texas State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion in Austin, and are
included in virtually every major private collection of Early Texas Art.
Porfirio
Salinas was born on November 6, 1910 near the small town of Bastrop,
Texas, about thirty miles from Austin. His father, Porfirio G. Salinas
(1881-1967), and his mother, Clara G. Chavez, struggled to make a
hardscrabble living as tenant farmers, but eventually were forced to
give up farming. The family moved to San Antonio, where Salinas' father
was able to get a job working as a laborer for the railroad, but the
scenic area around Bastrop, with its pine trees and the wide expanse of
the Rio Grande River, would forever remain a touchstone for the artist.
For the rest of his life, Salinas and his brothers went back frequently
to visit their grandmother in her little farmhouse. When in Bastrop,
Porfirio painted on the banks of the Rio Grande or in the groves of
pine trees. The Salinas family was close-knit and Porfirio was the
middle child of five children, so he had an older brother and sister as
well as a younger brother and sister. His mother was a native of
Mexico, so throughout his childhood the family made the long drive to
Mexico to visit Clara Salinas' family.
As a child growing up in
the bi-lingual section of San Antonio, Salinas drew and painted
incessantly and by the time he was ten, he was already producing work
that was mature enough to sell to his schoolteachers. Many years later
in an article in the New York Times he was described as a "boy whose
textbooks were seldom opened and whose sketchbook was never closed."
Instead of studying, the young artist spent his spare time watching
artists paint in and around San Antonio. As an aspiring painter,
Salinas was fortunate to grow up in the historic city, which had the
most active art scene in Texas. It was his exposure to older,
professional painters that encouraged the precocious young painter to
leave school early in order to help his family and pursue a career as a
professional artist, despite his father's inability to see art as a
career with any future for his son.
When Salinas was about
fifteen he came to know the artist Robert W. Wood (1889-1979). He met
Wood while he was employed in an art supply store and he soon began to
work as an assistant to the English-born painter, who had moved from
Portland to San Antonio in 1924. Although the diminutive Englishman was
already an established professional artist, he did not have a great
deal of formal art training and so he was then studying with the
academically trained Spanish painter Jose Arpa (1858-1952) in order to
augment his knowledge and give his work a more polished look. Salinas
was an eager young man, and while working in Wood's downtown San
Antonio studio he learned to stretch canvases, frame paintings and to
sketch in larger compositions from small plein-air studies for the
English artist. He began to accompany Wood and Arpa to the hills
outside San Antonio, where they painted small Plein-air studies of
fields of blue lupin - the state flower, the famous "Bluebonnets" of
Texas - in the springtime and scenes of the gnarled Red Oaks as they
changed color in the fall. He was soon assisting Wood in the tedious
work of painting the tiny blue flowers that collectors wanted to see in
the landscapes they purchased of central Texas. According to a
1972 newspaper story, "Legend has it that one day in the 1920s artist
Robert Wood decided he could not bear to paint another bluebonnet in
one of his landscapes. He hired young Porfirio Salinas to paint
them in for him at five dollars a painting." Whether this story is
accurate or apocryphal isn't clear, but the ambitious and independent
young Salinas wasn't destined to be anyone's assistant for very long.
The
formative event of Porfirio Salinas' teenage years was the Texas
Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, a Roaring-Twenties dream of the
eccentric oilman Edgar B. Davis (1873-1951). These competitive shows of
paintings of wildflowers and Texas life were mounted in San Antonio
from 1927 to 1929. Held at the newly opened Witte Museum each spring,
the exhibition featured large cash prizes donated by the philanthropic
Davis, which were an inducement for artists to travel from all over the
United States to paint in the Hill Country of Texas. The "Davis
Competitions," as they were known, helped to cement San Antonio's
reputation as an art center, a legacy that remains with the "River
City" today. The shows generated a great deal of excitement in the
area, helping to make celebrities of the some of the artists who had
already settled there and encouraging others to make San Antonio their
home. Over the three years that the wildflower competitions were held,
more than 300 paintings were exhibited, and many thousands of viewers
saw the paintings at the Witte Museum and on tours throughout the state
and in New York. Each year Davis would generously purchase the winning
paintings and then donate them to the San Antonio Art League. Young
Porfirio Salinas would have been able to not only watch his two mentors
- Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa - paint the works that they entered in
the Davis Competitions, he would have been able to see Arpa take
several of the major prizes, receiving the judge's accolades for
"Verbena," "Cactus Flower" and "Picking Cotton," works that are still
on view at the San Antonio Art League Museum today. Unfortunately,
Davis eventually put his donations to work in other charitable
endeavors, bringing to an end the wildflower events, but only after
they inspired Salinas and other young painters and had helped to make
wildflower paintings the most sought-after subject for traditionalist
Texas collectors.
In 1930, when he was only twenty, Salinas
hung out a shingle and began to paint professionally, augmenting the
sales of his easel paintings with what little business he could garner
by painting signs for local concerns. It was a struggle for the young
artist to make a living, as the effects of the Great Depression were
settling in. His early works are very similar to those of Robert
Wood's, both in subject matter and treatment. Salinas did small
paintings of Bluebonnets for the tourists who visited San Antonio to
see the famous Alamo as well as paintings of the Texas missions. While
a few of his early works have a soft, tonalist quality, with subtle
gradations of sunset colors, most were painted in a style that fits
well within the currents of the late American Impressionist style, with
solid drawing and a warm, chromatic palette. Like Robert Wood's works
of the 1930s, the paintings Salinas produced as a young man were
usually well composed and detailed views of the spring wildflowers in
full bloom in the Texas countryside. In contrast to Wood's work,
however, early Salinas compositions were usually pure landscapes
without the pioneer farms or dilapidated fences that Wood often used to
add visual interest to his wildflower scenes, and he also painted
scenes of San Antonio itself as his mentor Jose Arpa had done. To
residents of the Hill Country, Salinas was especially adept at
accurately capturing the palette of the region and its unique
atmosphere.
In 1939 Salinas began working with Dewey Bradford
(1896-1985), one of the great characters of Texas art. Bradford was a
second-generation dealer whose family operated the Bradford Paint
Company in Austin, where they sold art supplies, framed artwork,
restored paintings and exhibited paintings by Texas artists. Salinas
was struggling when he met Bradford, but the older man took the young
artist under his wing and began to sell his work reliably, even though
the prices that people would pay for a painting were still low due to
the lingering effects of the Great Depression. Bradford was a born
salesman with a gift for storytelling, and truth be told, a bit of
embroidery. The relationship between Bradford and Salinas was often
rocky, but it was to last the rest of the artist's life and give him a
modest sense of loyalty and security, things which are all too rare in
the art world. While Bradford could be critical of his work, Salinas
knew that he had a dealer who encouraged him, believed in him and was
not shy about singing his praises to anyone who entered Bradford's
store on Guadalupe Street.
During the early years of World
War II Salinas met a pretty Mexican woman from Guadalajara named Maria
Bonillas, who was working as a secretary for the Mexican National
Railways office in San Antonio. While he was walking downtown with a
painting of a bullfighter under his arm, he started a conversation with
the young woman, and things progressed rapidly. The couple were married
on February 15, 1942 and settled into life in bi-lingual San Antonio
and they eventually purchased a tidy stone home on Buena Vista street
that had a detached studio in back. By the time the United States
entered World War II, Salinas was starting to make a decent living
selling his art and beginning to garner recognition across Texas.
However, in 1943, like millions of other young men, he was drafted into
the service of his country. Fortunately, as an older Army draftee with
special talents, after his training he was assigned to Fort Sam
Houston, right in San Antonio, allowing him to remain at home while
still completing his obligation to "Uncle Sam." Because of his artistic
abilities, Salinas was asked to do paintings for the Army as well as a
mural for the Officer's Club, which has been re-discovered in recent
years. In his spare time he kept working on landscapes and when the war
ended in 1945, he was not faced with the same rocky transition from
military to civilian life as many veterans. That same year, Salinas
became a father as he and Maria celebrated the birth of his only child,
Christina Maria Salinas.
Like most landscape artists of the
era, Salinas was an avid Plein-air painter, and he took his easel and
paint box with him on trips throughout Texas and into Mexico. He and
his wife traveled deep into her native country, where the artist
painted the majestic volcanic peaks of Iztaccihuatl (known as the
"Sleeping Woman" because of its unique shape) and Popocatepetl (called
the "smoking mountain" because the volcano is still active), south of
Mexico City. Salinas also painted studies of rustic villages and their
residents. While his most popular paintings were always the scenes of
the Texas Bluebonnets and other wildflowers that bloom all over the
Hill Country in the spring, he also painted scenes of the twisted Texas
oak trees of central Texas, the more arid landscapes of the Texas
panhandle and West Texas, and the historic Texas missions; he even sold
rapidly executed scenes of bullfights and cockfights for
Mexican-American collectors.
By the late 1940s, the American
economy was finally growing again and wealthier Texans began to collect
Salinas paintings, purchasing them from galleries in San Antonio and
Dallas and at Dewey Bradford's County Store Gallery in Austin. Salinas
also sold work to the Atlanta dealer Dr. Carlton Palmer, who
represented Robert W. Wood for many years. In 1948 Palmer sold two
large Salinas paintings to the Citizen National Bank in Abilene, Texas.
Because Austin was the state capitol, Bradford counted many of the
state's elite among his patrons, and due to his interest in history and
literature, he played a large role in the cultural history of central
Texas. Bradford introduced a number of the major Texas political
figures to Salinas' work, including Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973),
who was then in the House of Representatives and on his way to winning
a controversial election that vaulted him in the United States Senate.
Johnson became an enthusiastic collector, as did his political mentor,
the legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn (1882-1961). Johnson decorated
his Washington offices with Salinas paintings and he brought a number
of them home to his vast LBJ Ranch, near Johnson City, Texas. In spite
of his important patrons, Salinas went through a fallow and difficult
period in the late 1950s. He had a volatile temperament, which made
relationships difficult, and it took great patience for his wife to
help him manage his career.
As Salinas entered middle age his
work began to sell steadily, but except for tourists who purchased his
paintings in San Antonio, he was known primarily only to Texas art
collectors. All that changed in 1961 with the election of John F.
Kennedy (1917-1963) to the Presidency of the United States and his
running mate Lyndon Johnson to the Vice Presidency. Johnson was an
expansive, larger-than-life character and his status as a long, tall
Texan in a cowboy hat was a large part of his imposing political image.
During his storied career in the House of Representatives and the
United States Senate, Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007) spent
their time in Washington in a modest house on the edge of Rock Creek
Park, but this home would not do for a Vice President. So, in 1961, the
Johnsons purchased a French chateau-styled home in the Spring Valley
section of the Capitol. Obtained from the famed socialite and
ambassador Perle Mesta (1889-1975), the house came with a fine
collection of French furniture and tapestries, and the designer
Genevieve Hendricks was hired to meld the French look with objects from
the Johnsons' overseas travels and paintings of the flora and fauna of
their native Texas. Featured prominently in the foyer were the
paintings of Porfirio Salinas. Because of the Johnsons' patronage, his
work was mentioned in Time Magazine and other national publications.
Lady Bird Johnson loved her landscapes of the Texas Hill Country and
told reporters that, "I want to see them when ever I open the door, to
remind me where I come from."
After President Kennedy's death
thrust Lyndon Johnson into the Presidency, he brought his Salinas
paintings into the historic halls of the White House, further enhaning
the Texas painter's national reputation. At the time of the President
Kennedy's assassination, Salinas had completed a scene of a horse
drinking titled "Rocky Creek" that was to have been presented to
Kennedy during his ill-fated visit to Dallas. Instead, in an effort to
memorialize the fallen President, Salinas painted a symbolic work of a
lone horse depicted against foreboding clouds. During his tenure in the
White House, President Johnson presented a Salinas landscape as a state
gift to the President of Mexico, Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1911-1979). During
the 1960s, Salinas paintings sold briskly and, thanks to Presidential
patronage, for escalating prices. In an interview with a writer from
the New York Times, President Johnson enthused about the work of "his
favorite artist" and said that, "his work reminds me of the country
around the ranch." Salinas was invited to the LBJ Ranch frequently
during the Johnson administration and his paintings were hung
throughout the ranch, in the President's offices and even in the
private quarters of the White House. The connection to President
Johnson was a great boon to sales of Salinas paintings, and in 1964,
when the demand was at its height, Texas Governor John Connelly
(1917-1993) was told that all Salinas'work was sold and that he would
have to wait for a painting.
In 1960, a half century after his
birth, Salinas was honored by his home town of Bastrop, a celebration
that touched the modest artist. In 1962 Salinas was given a solo
exhibition at the Witte Museum in San Antonio that featured more than
twenty of his works. By the early 1960s, sales of reproductions of the
artist's landscapes by the New York Graphic Society and other
publishers grew rapidly, enlarging his audience throughout the United
States. In 1967, Dewey Bradford helped to organize the production of a
book of Texas stories titled "Bluebonnets and Cactus" (Austin:
Pemberton Press: 1967), which was profusely illustrated with paintings
by Salinas. His works were still popular when Salinas died after a
brief illness in April of 1973, just a few months after former
President Johnson's passing. He was memorialized in the City of Austin
by Porfirio Salinas Day, which honored him for having "done much to
bring the culture of Mexico and Texas together with his paintings."
Bastrop, Texas, the city of the artist's birth, has been holding a
Salinas Art Exhibition annually since 1981.
He painted hundreds of scenes of the wildflowers,
including the various varieties of Blue Lupin, the state flower, as
well as other flowering flora. These show the influence of his artistic
mentors Robert W. Wood and Jose Arpa Y Perea. Salinas also painted a
number of scenes of Prickly Pear Cactus that show the influence of the
English painter Dawson Dawson-Watson (1864-1939), who painted many such
works during his tenure in Texas. He painted the more arid Texas
landscape infrequently and these works are very rare today and sought
after by collectors from the Texas Panhandle and West Texas. Salinas
also painted many river landscapes along the Guadalupe, Rio Frio, the
San Antonio and the Rio Grande. On trips to his wife's homeland of
Mexico, he painted a number of scenes of the volcanic peaks as well as
scenes of peasant villages and villagers. Figurative paintings are rare
among Salinas' works and these scenes of bullfights, fandangos and cock
fights are probably the least sought after of his paintings. There are
also a small number of modest marines, painted on trips to the Texas
and California coast. Salinas paintings are highly prized by collectors
of early Texas art, with the paintings of wildflowers in greatest
demand.
Works by Porfirio Salinas can be found in a number of
public collections, including the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in
Canyon, Texas; the Texas State Capitol; the Texas Governor's Mansion;
the Lyndon Baines Johnson Ranch; the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in
Bonham, Texas; Amarillo High School; the Witte Museum in San Antonio;
the historic Joan and Price Daniel House in San Antonio; the Stark
Museum in Orange, Texas; the R.W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport,
Louisiana; the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo, Colorado; Texas
A & M University and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Salinas has been featured in a number of reference works as well as
anthologies devoted to American Western Art...
Category
1950s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"Bluebonnet Time Hill Country Frame Size: 35 x 41 Bluebonnets, Poppies, Oak Tree
By Porfirio Salinas
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1950s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"SUPPER TIME STORM" WESTERN COVERED WAGON DONALD YENA BORN 1933 DATED 1975
By Donald Yena
Located in San Antonio, TX
Donald Yena
(1933- )
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 20 x 30
Frame Size: 28 x 38
Medium: Watercolor
Dated 1975
"Suppertime Storm"
Biography
Donald Yena (1933- ) San Antonio Artist
Don...
Category
1970s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Watercolor
"A Glowing Day South West Texas" Date: 1910. Exquisite Sky in this Texas piece
By Julian Onderdonk
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1910s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"Near Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey" Date: 1908. Exquisite small snow scene!!!!!!
By Julian Onderdonk
Located in San Antonio, TX
Julian Onderdonk
(1882 - 1922)
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 6 x 9
Frame Size: 19 x 22
Medium: Oil
Dated 1909
"Near Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey"
Julian Onderdonk (1882 - 1922)
Known...
Category
Early 1900s Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
PORTRAIT OF "SAM HOUSTON" LARGE 55 X 44 FRAMED. DATED 1918 NICE LARGE TEXAS
Located in San Antonio, TX
Emil Hermann
(1871 - 1966)
Austria, Ohio, Wichita Falls (Texas) Artist
Image Size: 47.5 x 36
Frame Size: 54.5 x 44
Medium: Oil
Dated 1918
"Sam Houston"
Emil Hermann (1871 - 1966)
Emil Hermann
(Am.1871-1966)
Emil Hermann was born in Vienna of French and Austrian parents. His father was an engineer who did not consider art a proper profession for a young man. But so obvious was Hermann's talent, that his father let him enter the Royal Academy in Vienna. He went on to study at the National Art Institute at Budapest and the Rembrandt Art Institute in Amsterdam. In 1889, Hermann came to the United States to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at the age of nineteen.
Hermann was the organizer and first president of the Ohio Brush and Pencil Club and president of the Dayton, Ohio Art Club. As a result of his work in the latter city, a two-million-dollar art center was later founded there.
After enrolling in the Academy, he opened his first studio in Philadelphia. In 1890, he received his citizenship papers.
His first break came when a Dayton art dealer invited Hermann to hold a one-man art show. From this show, he obtained a position as a muralist with the great Schachne Studios. Soon, he became one of the best-known portrait artists in the area, drawing the leading citizens of Dayton to his studio.
The upcoming artist was such a success that, soon, he was traveling throughout the country to execute portrait commissions and hold exhibitions. On one such trip, he was in Tulsa. After viewing his exhibition, a group of Missouri attorneys, some of whom were living in Oklahoma, commissioned Hermann to paint a portrait of General John H. Pershing from an only existing photograph that had been made in France.
This work, when completed, was presented to the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, and he was later commissioned to duplicate the portrait for the city of Loclede, Missouri, the birthplace of General Pershing.
At a suggestion from his Tulsa friends, Hermann opened an exhibit on the balcony of the Freer Furniture Company, at Ninth and Scott in Wichita Falls, in 1919, in the midst of the great Burkburnett oil boom.
Mr. and Mrs. J.A. Kemp commissioned him to do a portrait, which now hangs in the Kemp Public Library. As a result of this show his fame spread and he was soon flooded with offers from all parts of the southwest. The Fort Worth citizens club gave him a commission to do a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt...
Category
1910s Realist Portrait Paintings
Materials
Oil
"DUCK HUNT" MERGANSERS, DUCK CALL, SHOTGUNN DATED 1889 FRAME 43 X 35 NEWCOMB
By Edward Chalmers Leavitt
Located in San Antonio, TX
Edward Chalmers Leavitt
(1842 - 1904)
Rhode Island Artist
Image Size: 36 x 28
Frame Size: 42.5 x 34.5 Newcomb Macklin Frame.
Medium: Oil
Dated 1889
"Duck Hunt" Mergansers
Edward Chalmers Leavitt (1842 - 1904)
Edward Chalmers Leavitt, artist, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, March 9, 1842, the son of Rev. Jonathan and Charlotte Esther (Stearns) Leavitt. His paternal ancestor was John Leavitt, who came to Massachusetts Bay in the first ship and settled in Hingham. On the maternal side, he is descended from John Alden and Priscilla Mullens, who came to Plymouth in the Mayflower.
Leavitt was educated in private schools in Providence, and at Kimball Union Academy, Meriden, New Hampshire. During the Civil
War in 1862 and 1863, he served in the navy on the U.S.S. Galena. In his profession of artist, Mr. Leavitt is especially noted as a painter of fruit, flowers and still life.
He exhibited in the National Academy for several years and has made many successful exhibitions in Providence and Boston. He was a member of the Boston and Providence art clubs, and the Providence Press Club. He was also a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. In politics his proclivities are mainly Republican. He has been twice married: first, May 19, 1877, to Ellen M. Fuller; and second, April 22, 1880, to Elizabeth S. Chace.
Submitted November 2004 by Edward Bentley, Art Collector and Researcher from Lansing, Michigan.
Source is the publication "Men of Progress: Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Leaders in Business and Professional Life from the State of Rhode Island." New England magazine. 1896.
Edward C. Leavitt, born in 1842, has been described as "Providence, Rhode Island's leading still-life painter" in the late 19th Century. (Zellman 324) His teacher, James Morgan Lewin, was a prominent still-life painter in Fall River, Massachusetts, a neighboring town.
Leavitt, a detailed, sharp-focused, realistic painter, was in love with texture and light, and was prolific and successful, painting a variety of still life subjects including flowers, fruit and even fish and dead game animals. His objects, including costly antiques and household decorative items, were often placed on ornamental, gleaming surfaces.
He was a frequent exhibitor at the National Academy of Design in the 1870s and 1890s. The artist, who died in 1904, moved from a position of success and popularity to being ignored for many years until the publication of William H. Gerdts and Russell Burke's American Still-Life Painting in 1971. It is uncertain whether this disastrous loss of respect took place because Leavitt's work declined in quality during the last decade of his life, or because he was a victim of the periodic shifts in taste and fashion that afflict the arts.
Sources:
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art
Biography from Roger King Fine Art
Edward Leavitt was one of the leading still life artists of nineteenth century New England. He lived and worked in Providence, and studied with James Morgan Lewin, a leading painter of the Fall River School, which, in the late 19th Century, was one of the most important centers of still life painting.
While Lewin branched out into other types of painting, Leavitt remained devoted to the art of the still life. His paintings are sharply focused, realistic, and carefully finished. Ornate objects such as urns, ewers, platters, cut glassware...
Category
1880s Realist Animal Paintings
Materials
Oil
TEXAS WATERFOWL ARTIST HERB BOOTH HOUSTON GEESE. WATERFOWL. DUCKS 39 X 51 FRAMED
By Herb Booth
Located in San Antonio, TX
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...
Category
1980s Impressionist Animal Paintings
Materials
Watercolor
"MANOLETE" THE MOST FAMOUS BULLFIGHTER MEXICO SPAIN MATADOR PORFIRIO SALINAS ART
By Porfirio Salinas
Located in San Antonio, TX
Porfirio Salinas
(1910-1973)
San Antonio Artist
Size: 24 x 20
Frame: 30 x 26
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"Manolete" The Bullfighter.
Manuel Laureano Rodríguez Sánchez (4 July 1917 – 29 Aug...
Category
1940s Impressionist Animal Paintings
Materials
Oil
"SILVERIO" THE BULLFIGHTER / MATADOR MEXICO MEXICAN BY PORFIRIO SALINAS
By Porfirio Salinas
Located in San Antonio, TX
Porfirio Salinas
(1910-1973)
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 24 x 20
Frame Size: 30 x 26
Medium: Oil on Canvas
"Silverio" The Bullfighter
Silverio Pérez (20 June 1915 — 2 September 20...
Category
1930s Impressionist Animal Paintings
Materials
Oil
"BULLFIGHTER" MATADOR MEXICO MEXICAN CIRCA 1950s PORFIRIO SALINAS ARTIST
By Porfirio Salinas
Located in San Antonio, TX
Porfirio Salinas
(1910-1973)
San Antonio Artist
Size: 16 x 12
Frame: 20 x 16
Medium: Oil
"Bullfighter"
Porfirio Salinas was a self-taught artist who painted landscapes of Central Tex...
Category
1930s Impressionist Animal Paintings
Materials
Oil
"FARM HOUSE" OIL PAINTING APPLIED WITH PALLET KNIFE
By Jose Vives-Atsara
Located in San Antonio, TX
Jose Vives-Atsara
(1919-2004)
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 24 x 30
Frame Size: 31 x 37
Medium: Oil
"Farmhouse"
Biography
Jose Vives-Atsara (1919-2004)
His list of Pallbearers says ...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil