Texas - Paintings

Elizabeth of York is famously known as the "White Princess" because she was an heir of the House of York, which used the white rose as its royal symbol. By marrying Henry VII of the ...

Lively abstract painting with primary tones of yellows, reds and greens with accents of blue and black on white background, 1952. Signed lower right. Original artwork on paper dis...

French abstract in tones of blues, black and purple, 1980s. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold border. Mat fits a standard-size frame. Archival pla...

Robert Harrison (Born 1949) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 18 x 24 Frame Size: 24 x 30 Medium: Oil on Canvas Signed "Sea of Blue" Bluebonnets Biography Robert Harrison (Born 1949) Ro...

Robert Harrison (Born 1949) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 11 x 14 Frame Size: 16 x 20 Medium: Oil on Canvas "Bluebonnets" Biography Robert Harrison (Born 1949) Robert Harrison was b...

Donald S. Vogel has been a set designer and technical director in the theater, a fine art dealer, and a writer, but first and foremost he is a painter. From a young age he was intrig...

Ray Roberts (Born 1957) Southern California Artist Image Size: 12 x 16 Frame Size: 19 1/4 x 23 1/4 Medium: Oil ON BOARD SIGNED "Blooming California Poppies" California Landscape Ray Roberts(Born 1957) Born and raised in Southern California, Ray Roberts became a plein air* painter of desert and coastal landscapes. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Art Center College of Design* in Pasadena. His first studio was in Scottsdale, Arizona, and in 1997, he and his artist wife, Peggi Kroll Roberts, and their three children moved to Angel's Camp, California to a small ranch. He is a regular instructor of painting at the Scottsdale Artists' School. In August, 2000, Roberts won Best of Show for his painting Curtis Creek at the American Impressionist Society's* show in Cincinnati, Ohio. Source: Southwest Art, October 2004 Ray Roberts is one of California's most respected Plein Air artists. He has recently won the Gold Medal for "Best Painting" at the California Art Club and the Artists' Choice Award, the highest accolade from fellow artists, at three major Southwest art events. Ray Roberts is best known for his seascapes, figurative work, and majestic views of California and the Southwest. Ray Roberts' vibrant use of color, bold textures, and sensitivity to shifting patterns of light give life and movement to his paintings. They are to be experienced, not merely observed. Inspired by such early California impressionists as Hanson Puthuff, William Wendt, and William Ritschel, Ray Roberts seeks to capture the luminous, golden light and the magnificent, vanishing landscapes of his native state. Like his other great hero, Maynard Dixon, Ray Roberts shares a reverence for the land and a marked spirituality in his work. Ray Roberts believes in the importance of artistic legacy. "There's a brotherhood of painters who came before me and who will come after. We speak in the past, present, and future. We talk about our experience and personality, our torments and exhilarations; we talk about the beauty of the fleeting light, time and of our family, friends and acquaintances." Born in 1954, Ray Roberts grew up in an Orange County with orange groves, before the days of freeways and sprawling housing developments. It has given him an enduring affection for the untamed, undeveloped California of his youth. One boyhood neighbor was painter Evelyn Nunn Miller, who would let Ray Roberts into her studio to retrieve the balls he'd hit over her fence. Later, after the early death of his father and mother's ill-health, Ray Roberts was sent to Orme School, a beautiful, ranch-style boarding school in the Arizona desert. Its strong fine arts program helped Ray Roberts to discover his artistic talent. He then attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where he studied under John Asaro. He has also studied under Dan McCaw, Len Chmiel, and Mark Daily. Art Center is where Ray Roberts also met his wife, impressionist painter Peggi Kroll. While dating, the two of them would go out nightclubbing, to sketch rather than dance! It has been a successful partnership ever since. Like many successful artists before him, Ray Roberts first pursued a career as an illustrator, establishing a studio in Los Angeles and then Scottsdale, Arizona. He got up the courage to switch to fine art in 1992 and has never looked back. Ray and Peggi now live with their three children and assorted animals on a 20 acre ranch in Angel's Camp, an old California gold rush town, surrounded by the oak-studded hills which he frequently paints. The great outdoors is RayRoberts' studio. A bit of an adventurer, he's been known to backpack for several days into the wilderness, set up his easel on a cliff edge, or in the surf, for just the right setting. Awards and Affiliations Signature Member - Plein Air Painters of America (PAPA) Signature Member - California Art Club (CAC) Signature Member - Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (LPAPA) Signature Member - Northwest Rendezvous 2007 - Haggin Museum, Stockton 2007 - Santa Lucia Preserve, Invitational En Plein Air, Carmel, CA 2007 Exhibitor, Arizona: A Millennium of Arizona Art, Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ 2004 Gold Medal for "Best Painting" at the California Art Club's 94th Annual Gold Medal Juried Exhibition, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, California 2004 Artists' Choice Award- Laguna Plein Air Invitational Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California 2004 Artists' Choice Award- Maynard Dixon Country Invitational Mount Carmel, Utah 2003 Artists' Choice, Laguna Plein Air Invitational, Laguna, California 2003 Artists' Choice Award, Carmel Plein Air Festival, Carmel, California 2003 Honorable Mention, Carmel Plein Air Festival, Carmel, California 2003 Maynard Dixon Award, Sonoran Desert Invitational, Tucson, Arizona 2002 Honorable Mention, Laguna Plein Air Invitational, Laguna, California 2001 Honorable Mention, Scene on the Straight, Vallejo, California 2001 American Artist Magazine Award for Excellence, Oil Painters of America National Juried Show, Palm Desert, California 2000 Best of Show, American Impressionist Society, Cincinnati, Ohio 1999 Honorable Mention, Laguna Plein Air Invitational, Laguna, California 1999 Best Seascape, Ebell Club Annual Art Show, Los Angeles, California 1999 Artists' Choice Award, Carmel Plein Air Festival, Carmel, California 1995 Best of Show, Phippen Memorial Art Show, Prescott, Arizona 1995 First Place Oil, Phippen Memorial Art Show, Prescott, Arizona 1995 Best of Show, Beaver Creek Art...

Impressionistic oil painting of a bouquet of pink and white flowers. Hass, a late Impressionist painter of the Munch school, was known for his sensitivity of color perception and lig...

Richard Schmid (1934-2021) California, Vermont, Colorado, Illinois, New Hampshire Artist Image Size: 12 x 20 Frame Size: 18 x 26 Medium: Oil dated 2002 on canvas "Winter Geraniums" ...

Early Texas Impressionist country landscape painting by Porfirio Salinas. The work features a field of bluebonnets in full bloom accented by a few trees. Signed and dated in the fron...

Canvas Size: 29 x 24 in. Frame Size: 36.5 x 31 in. Signed, bottom leftt. In this mesmerizing portrait, Joaquín Torrents Lladó demonstrates the virtuoso brushwork and dramatic chiaro...

A marsh landscape in the style of Max Weyl. Oil on board measures 12 3/4 x 23 5/8; frame dimensions measure 16 1/4 x 27 x 1 1/4. Unsigned. Housed in a gold-to...

Colorful abstract cowboy portrait painting by contemporary artist Ian Francis. The work features a western inspired figure with a shadowed face dressed in a blue shirt and cowboy hat...

Valley House Gallery is honored to present a selection of paintings from the estate of American artist, John Hartell (1902-1995). John Hartell taught two disciplines at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York: freshman architecture and graduate painting. He was a much-loved professor there from 1930 until his retirement in 1967; one of his most illustrious students is the architect Richard Meier. As an artist, Hartell's first solo exhibition was in 1937 at Kleeman Gallery in New York. He exhibited at Kraushaar Galleries in New York for four decades, beginning in 1943. The Hartell Gallery at Cornell University, under the Sibley Dome, is named for him. In describing John Hartell, the artist Michael Boyd...

W.R. Thrasher (1908 - 1997) Texas Artist Image Size: 24 x 36 Frame Size: 33 x 45 Medium: Oil on Canvas Signed "Bluebonnets" Biography W.R. Thrasher (1908 - 1997) The state of Texas, ...

Realistic figurative portrait of an indigenous Native American man by American artist Kenneth Su. The work features a man dressed in traditional clothing with large rock formations i...

Janet Downie 1854-1944 Austin,San Antonio Image Size: 6.5 x 10 Frame Size: 10 x 13.5 Medium: Oil "Bluebonnet Road" signed Biography Janet Downie 1854-1944 Downie, Janet. 1854-194...

G. Harvey (Gerald Harvey Jones) (1933-2017) San Antonio, Austin, and Fredericksburg Artist Image Size: 60 x 40 Frame Size: 71 x 51 Medium: Oil on Canvas Signed 1980 "The Blowout" Woo...

Oil on board Board Size: 16 x 20 in. Frame Size: 22 x 26.5 in. Signed, bottom right. In this oil painting Jose Vives-Atsara captures the rugged, sun-drenched essence of the Spanish ...

Bronze & Steel Table

Sunset Impressionism Seascape Framed Water Texas Artist Marine Dawn Framed 11" x 13". Is part of newly released small works from V....Vaughan's collect...

G. Harvey (Gerald Harvey Jones) (1933-2017) San Antonio, Austin, and Fredericksburg Artist Image Size: 20 x 30 Frame Size: 28 x 38 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dated 1974 "Blowin' In" Sign...

A.D. Greer (1904-1998) Austin Artist Image Size: 43 x 67 Frame Size: 51 x 75 Medium: Oil on Canvas "Small Falls" Signed Biography A. D. Greer (1904-1998) A.D. Greer (Austin Artist) ...

William Ballantine Dorsey (1942-2019) California Artist Image Size: 16 x 20 Frame Size: 23.5 x 27.5 Medium: Oil on Canvas "California Landscape"

Contemporary large scale abstract floral painting by Texas based artist Wood Anthony Francher. Inspired by Mexican floral embroidery patterns and textiles, the work is a burst of bol...

Robert Wood (G. Day) (1889 -1979) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 20 x 24 Frame Size: 29 x 33 Medium: Oil Signed Lower left "Bluebonnet" Biography Robert Wood (G. Day) (1889 -1979) A painter of realistic landscapes reflecting a vanishing wilderness in America, Robert Wood (not to be confused with Robert E. Wood) is reportedly one of the most mass-produced artists in the United States. His painting became so popular he was unable to meet all of the demands, and many of his works were reproduced in lithographs and mass distributed as prints, place mats, and wall murals by companies including Sears, Roebuck. He was born in Sandgate, Kent on the south coast of England near Dover, the son of W.L. Wood, a famous home and church painter who recognized and supported his son's talent. In fact, he forced his son to paint by keeping him inside to paint rather than playing with his friends. At age 12, Wood entered the South Kensington School of Art. As a youth, he came to the United States in 1910, having served in the Royal Army, and he never returned to England. He traveled extensively all over the United States, especially in the West, often in freight cars, and also painted in Mexico and Canada. His itinerant existence took him to Illinois where he worked as a farmhand, to Pensacola, Florida where he married, briefly in Ohio, Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. In 1912, he was in Los Angeles, and in the late 1920s and early 1930s, in San Antonio, Texas, where he lived and in 1928 exhibited in the "Texas Wildflower Competition." From San Antonio, he gained a national reputation for his strong colored, dramatic paintings. Some of that prestige has been credited to his association with Jose Arpa, prominent Texas artist. Wood also gave art lessons, and one of his students was Porfirio Salinas. During this period, Wood sometimes signed his paintings G. Day or Trebor, which is Robert spelled backwards. In 1941 he went to California and painted numerous desert and mountain landscapes and coastal scenes. He lived in Carmel for seven years, and then moved to Woodstock, New York, but he soon returned to California, settling first in Laguna Beach, then San Diego, and finally in the High Sierras, where he and his wife built a home and studio near Bishop and lived until his death in 1979. Robert Wood was born March 4, 1889, in Sandgate, England, a small town on the Kentish coast not far from the white cliffs of Dover. His father, W. J. Wood, was a successful painter who recognized Robert's unusual talent. At the age of twelve, his father enrolled Wood in art school in the small town of Folkstone. He then attended the South Kensington School of Art. While attending art school, Wood won four first awards and three second awards, one each year, a record. In 1910 after service in the Royal Army, nineteen-year-old Wood and his friend, Claude Waters, immigrated to America. Initially, he settled in Illinois and worked as a hired hand on a farm belonging to Water's uncle. He would then strike out on his own, living the life of an itinerant painter. Wood traveled as a hobo, hopping freight trains and selling or bartering small paintings to support him along the way. When times were hard, he worked at whatever job was available. In this manner, he saw most of the United States and fell in love with rural America. By 1912, Wood visited Los Angeles for the first time, arriving on the day of the Titanic tragedy. Later that year, he had met, courted and married young Eyssel Del Wagoner in Florida. The couple moved to Ohio where a daughter, Florence, was born. During World War I, the family moved to Seattle where a son, John Robert Wood, was born in 1919. In the early 1920's, the young Wood family was almost constantly on the move. They stayed for short periods in Kansas, Missouri, California and for a longer time in Portland, Oregon, where Wood's friend Claude Waters had settled. Wood's seemingly endless wanderings disrupted his family life and delayed his development as a painter. However, through his travels he developed an appreciation for the American landscape that would inspire him for the rest of his career. Although aware of the current movement away from traditional realism in American art, he elected to travel that solitary path and remain true to his own vision of American’s grandeur and beauty poetically translated through his landscape and seascape paintings. In 1923, the Wood family discovered the beautiful city of San Antonio, Texas and it was there that he and his family would finally settle. He studied briefly at the San Antonio Art School with Spanish colorist Jose Arpa y Perea (1860-1952), who had arrived in San Antonio that same year. In the latter part of the 1920’s, Jose Arpa’s influence quickly became evident. Wood after several years of experimentation was becoming fine easel painter, capable of great subtlety with a new mature original style. Like Texas painters Robert Onderdonk (1853-1917) and his son Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922), Robert Wood concentrated on the distinctive Texas landscape with its Red Oak trees and wildflowers that covered the hill country landscape. He developed a reputation for his scenes of Blue Bluebonnets, the state flower. In the spring, the Texas prairie is covered with wildflowers, especially in the hill country surrounding San Antonio and Austin. Wood incorporated native stone barns and rough wood farmhouses that added authenticity and romance to his compositions. In 1925, Wood was divorced from his wife. In 1932, he moved to the famous scenic loop on San Antonio's outskirts. While still living in Texas, he took extensive western sketching trips that brought him to California. It is evident that his 1930’s California...

E. Salazar Texas Artist Image Size: 23.75 x 17.75 Frame Size: 29.5 x 23.5 Medium: Oil on Canvas Signed "The Brave"

Bold abstract painting by French artist, circa 1960. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold border. Mat fits a standard-size frame. Archival plastic sleeve ...

William Ballantine Dorsey (1942-2019) California Artist Size: 11 x 14 Frame: 17.5 x 20.5 Medium: Oil on Canvas "Early Santa Barbara" Biography William Ballantine Dorsey (1942-2019) O...

Bronze & Steel Table

Pondering in a Field Realist, Light/ Shadow Oil Painting 20"x16" Landscape Cattle . Pondering is Realist, Light/ Shadow Oil Painting 20"x16" Landscape that is part of a ne...

Floral still life of pink roses in a red vase with two figures, set against a dark background. Oil on canvas measures 15 3/4 x 11 7/8; frame dimensions measure 20 1/2 x 16 1/2 x 2 3/...

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...

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...

Early Texas Impressionist country landscape painting by Porfirio Salinas. The work features a small lake surrounded by trees as the sun sets in the background. Signed in the front lo...

acrylic & oil on canvas

Jose Vives-Atsara (1919-2004) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 30 x 24 Frame Size: 38.75 x 32.75 Medium: Oil on Canvas Applied by Palette Knife Dated 2001 "Flowers" Biography Jose Vives-Atsara (1919-2004) His list of Pallbearers says it all. They were not just buyers of his art they were some of his closest friends. Pallbearers: E. Glenn Biggs, James M. Cavender, III, Tom C. Frost, Jr., James W. Gorman, Jr., George B. Irish, Joseph R. Krier, Robert L. Mooney and H. Bartell Zachry, Jr. Jose Vives-Atsara was born April 13, 1919, in Villafranca del Penedes near Barcelona, Spain. A native Spaniard, he developed a love of painting at an early age, and by age 11 had committed himself to becoming an artist. He studied at Colegio de San Ramon and had his first one-person show at age 14. The Spanish Civil interrupted his idyllic young life as he was forced to serve in the Communist Army, and then was imprisoned, suffering many hardships. Soon after the war he married Emilia Hill Domenech, and in 1947 set out to move with his wife and child aboard a tramp steamer to the United States. Unfortunately, immigration quotas did not allow them to move directly to the United States, and it was eight years before they achieved that goal. During this interim before obtaining temporary visas, he and his family lived first, in Caracas, Venezuela and then in Mexico City, Mexico. The family settled in San Antonio, Texas, where he had made friends on a previous visit. He and his wife and children gained citizenship in time for their first Christmas in the United States. He became such an exemplary immigrant citizen that officials of the U.S. District Court for the Western District Court regularly invited him to share his thoughts and advice for living in America with newly naturalized citizens Vives-Atsara also developed a close relationship with the Incarnate Word College, becoming, over the years, both a professor of art, and Artist in Residence. As a painter, he depicted many local scenes including San Antonio missions and the San Antonio River. For special guests such as Pope John Paul II, heads of state, and royalty from foreign countries, he was commissioned to provide paintings as gifts. His paintings were also commissioned for Frost Bank and the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. For his vibrant oil paintings, he used only nine colors, mixed in a variety of ways. They have been described as both realistic and impressionistic. "Vives-Atsara believed that art is a reflection of the artist's soul, if this is true; his paintings reflect a beautiful, bright spirit." (Richardson) Jose Vives-Atsara died in San Antonio on January 13, 2004 and is buried there in Sunset Memorial Park Mausoleum. Jose Vives-Atsara was born in Vilafranca del Panades in the Catalonian region of Spain on April 30, 1919. As a small boy he loved to sketch with pencil and paper. He began painting at the age of eleven. His first one-man show came at the ripe old age of fourteen. From that time on, painting has been his love and his way of life. Jose studied art at Saint Raymond College and School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. He is quick to admit that his most inspirational teacher has been nature itself. Mr. Vives-Atsara came to San Antonio in 1956 where he has established his art career. His use of a palette knife in painting allows him to blend rich pure pigments to achieve his goal of creating a powerful statement of color directly on the canvas. This style is intended to produce works that are distinctively 'Vives-Atsara'. Vives-Atsara is represented in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Spain; Fort Worth Art Museum, Texas; His Royal Highness Juan Carlos...

An abstract expressionist acrylic painting on canvas with wonderful color combinations of whites, pinks, orange and effortless lines and shapes. Inspired by Claude Monet's Lilly Pads...

acrylic & pastel on paper

Contemporary realistic Colorado landscape nature painting by Houston based artist Jerry Greenberg. The work features sunlight streaming onto a rock path lined with aspen trees. Signed in the front lower right corner as well as titled on the reverse. Currently hung in a gold frame. Dimensions Without Frame: H 24 in. x W 24 in. Artist Biography: I have a deep appreciation for nature. In my work I seek to convey the landscape as I experience it emotionally as well as visually. I travel frequently throughout the United States and Europe in search of new landscapes. Some of my favorite subjects include rivers and creeks in the Texas hill country; aspen trees in the Rocky Mountains; ponds in New England; and lush rolling hills in the English countryside. My influences include French and Russian Impressionists and early California landscape...

By Emile Albert Gruppe (1896-1978) 30" x 36" Oil paint on canvas Framed Size: 38" x 44" This painting by Emile Gruppe, titled "Autumn Landscape in the Mountains," captures a peacef...

Shine On: Diamonds Are Forever is a dazzling oil painting by Chloe Hedden that captures the radiant essence of a cut diamond in luminous, painterly detail. With a kaleidoscope of ref...

Look for Free Shipping at Checkout The Evening Gown is an American Impressionistic painting by Stuart Fullerton. The artist is know for his figurative paintings in the American Impr...

Modern Cubist inspired still life painting by the iconic Houston based artist David Adickes. The work features an abstracted teal and maroon toned floral still life on a small table....

By Martha Ochoa Oil on Canvas Canvas Size: 24" x 16" Framed Size: 27" x 19.25" This lovely painting by Martha Ochoa is from the Cusco tradition. The Cusco School was an artistic tra...

Contemporary colorful abstract painting by Houston based artist Shelbi Nicole. The work features black, white, and orange shapes floating against a grey background. Signed and dated ...

"In the world of still life and landscape, conceptual events meet one another – the structural meets the narrative, the small stands in the space of the large, and color has a chance...

Dollie Nabinger (1905-1988) Victoria, Harlingen, Nacogdoches, Fredericksburg, Carrollton, Painter Image Size: 18 x 24 Frame Size: 25 x 31 Medium: Oil, Signed, Canvas "Pines of Texas"...

James Robinson (1944-2015) Austin, Dallas, Houston Artist Image Size: 18 x 24 Frame Size: 29 x 35 Medium: Acrylic on Canvas "Crossing the Blanco" River Medium: Acrylic on Canvas Clea...

Working in his open-air studio, Miles Cleveland Goodwin is deeply in touch with the rural landscape. Goodwin’s ruminative portrayals, full of earthy metaphor and soulful intuition, e...

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...

Abstract drawing of a blue house in a yellow field by German-American painter, Wolf Kahn. Signed and dated by the artist in the lower right corner. Framed and matted in a silver wood...

Texas Longhorn and Sheep Realism 20" x 16" oil Bovine Landscape Animals The Duo is an 20 X 16 oil on canvas painting of a sheep and a longhorn who look as if they are in searc...

Exhibited in "Benji Stiles: A Human Day" at Reeves Art + Design. In “A Human Day,” a solo show dedicated to the work of contemporary multidisciplinary artist Benji Stiles, we explor...

G. Harvey (Gerald Harvey Jones) (1933-2017) San Antonio, Austin, and Fredericksburg Artist Image Size: 16 x 20 Frame Size: 25 x 29 Medium: Oil on Canvas Signed 1976 "Country Place" ...

"River Scene" Artist: Jean Metzinger Medium: Oil on Canvas Size: 23" x 28.75" Date 1902-3 Signed, bottom right. Metzinger Catalogue Raisonne Number: AM-...

Willian A. Slaughter (1923-2003) William A. Slaughter was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1923 and died in Dallas, Texas December 2003. His first call was to the ministry and after ser...

Blues Overlapping Orange 47 x 47 Abstract Art Bold Colors $4400 Geometric Shapes Other painting by Marilyn Biles shown in images As life often does, the life of Marilyn Biles h...

Cliff Cavin Texas Artist Size: 24 x 30 Frame: 30.5 x 36.5 Medium: Oil 2022 "Springtime Blues" Biography Cliff Cavin Cliff Cavin, a native of San Antonio, Texas, is a landscape artist...

Modern mid-century still life with bright accents of red, circa 1960. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold border. Mat fits a standard-size frame. Archiva...