The Witte Museum, established in 1926 in San Antonio, is dedicated to telling the ‘Stories of Texas” from prehistoric times to the present. It is best known for it’s dinosaur exhibits. This article is about their unique (one venue only) history of Texas through Artworks where Texas or Texans are the subject and Art created by famous Texans.
Artists arrived in what is now Texas centuries ago. Illuminating the soul of this vast territory through precise renderings of early Texas life, romantic landscapes, stark depression-era portrayals, trailblazing modernist canvases, and exuberant abstractions and sculptures.
“The Art of Texas: 250 Years” exhibition covers the gamut of art in Texas from the portrait and memorial paintings of the colonial period up to twentieth-century modernism. It is a survey of the many subjects and styles that Texas artists have explored and developed over two centuries, but it is also a chronicle of the state itself, its history, its strikingly diverse landscape and its dynamic blend of constantly changing culture.
This exhibition presents the multi-faceted stories of the art and artists of Texas, but it is not finished, it is a story that continues to unfold in the studios of artists in every corner of Texas.
The Regions of Texas. (Clockwise from left: West Texas Deserts & Mountains – Pan-Handle Plains – Central Praire – East Texas Pineywoods – Gulf Coast – Rio Grande Valley – South Texas Thornbrush – and Hill Country.) San Antonio is located at that point – the confluence of the Hill Country, the South Texas Thornbrush and the Central Praire.
“The Art of Texas: 250 Years”
An exhibition at the WITTE Museum, San Antonio
(Photos taken with permission.)
“Watering the Herd” (detail) 1889 by Frank Reaugh – pastel on paper
“A Winter Morning on the Guadalupe River, Southwest Texas” by Julian Onderdonk, oil on canvas
The Terry Rangers, ca. 1862 by Carl G. von Iwonski, oil on canvas
“Bluebonnet Field” by Julian Onderdonk, 1912 – oil on canvas
“Cactus Flowers” by Julian Onderdonk – oil on canvas
“Desert at Night” by Everett Spruce, 1947 oil on board
“Pulliam Ridge, Chisos Mountains” by Alexander Hogue 1980 oil on canvas
“World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Jack Johnson”
“Solar Temple” by Jack Boyton 1954 casein on masonite
“The Opal” by Louis Oscar Griffith – oil on canvas board
Georgia O’Keeffee “Red Landscape” 1918, oil on board
“Cotton Boll” 1936 by Otis Dozier, oil on board
“Gleaners of the South” by Ella Mewhinney – 1928, oil on canvas (Bell County Texas)
“First Light” by John Eliot Jenkins, 1910 (near Austin)
“Marble Falls” 1885, by William Henry Huddle – oil on canvas,
“Untitled – Early Landscape” by Porfirio Salinas ca. 1885, oil on canvas
“Cactus Flowers”
“Episode of the Buffalo Gun” 1909, by Frederic Remington, oil on canvas
“View of El Paso, Looking South”, 1925, by Audley Dean Nicols, oil on canvas
“Where the Mountains Meet the Plains” by Jerry Bywaters, 1939
“Texas Hill Country”, by Frederic Browne, 1930s, oil on canvas
“Texas Mural”, by Thomas M. Stell Jr., 1937, oil on board
“Oil Field Refinery – Fort Worth, Texas” 1934, by Pattie Richardson East, oil on canvas
“The Road to San Antonio from Austin”, 1950s, by Ralph White, oil on masonite
“Whistle Stop (Spread)”, 1977, by Robert Rauchenberg, found objects, transfers, on wood support
“Cowboy” 1949, by Charles Truett Williams, wood and metal
“Thin Longhorn” – William A. Reily, wood construction
“San José Mission”, 1884 by Stephen Seymour Thomas, oil on canvas
“Shearing Time” by Fred Darge, 1935, oil on canvas
“Branding Scene at Cathedral Mountain”, by Julius Woeltz, 1940, oil on canvas
“Cowman” 1928, by R. Vernon Hunter, oil on canvas
“Little Red River” 2017, by Laura Lewis, oil on canvas
“The Charles Clark”, by Julius Stockfleth, 1899, oil on canvas
“The Quilting Bee” 1968, by Fannie Lou Speice, oil on canvas
“Chili Queens at the Alamo” by Julian Robert Onderdonk (Hung in the Oval Office during the George W. Bush Administration.
“Portrait of a Good Student”, San Antonio, Texas – 1920, by José Arpa, oil on canvas
Mid-Century style of painting
“Emmie Staffel” by Louise Wueste, oil on canvas-
“The Trail Ride” 1935, by Fred Darge, oil on canvas
“On the Ranch” 1941, by Jerry Bywaters, oil and tempera on Masonite
“Sarah in the Summertime”, 1947, by Tom Lea, oil on canvas
Downtown Fort Worth, 1915, by Murray P. Bewley
Artist Self-Portrait
Wonderful European Stye, no other information available.
“The Alamo, Mission San Antonio de Valero” after 1850, oil on canvas,
“Untitled” wood, ca. 1935 by Mabel Fairfax Smith Karl
“Cattle Drive” 1923-1924, by Harold Bugbee
“Cattle Loading, West Texas”, by Thomas Hart Benton, 1928-1929, oil and opaque watercolor on canvas
“Tremont St. in Galveston during a Hurricane – September 1900”, by Julius Stockfleth
Mural from an early 20th-century all-black school in Texas.
Mural about positive black experiences in segregated Texas, by John Biggers. This was on the wall of an all-black public Texas school which was closed after the public schools were integrated. The mural was removed and spent many years outside, under a shed and open to the weather, heat, moisture, cold and the dry winds of Texas. It was luckily found and restored by the original artist, John Biggers, before it was too late.
This Art of Texas: 250 Years exhibition has some of the most famous artists of our time represented in it, and many excellent examples of traditional western art depicting cattle, cowboys, Indians and ranch life. This Texas Art Show was a one of a kind exhibit of Texas Only Art – the exhibition catalog should still be available from the Witte Museum gift shop.
