| Texas Art and a Wildcatter's Dream: Edgar B. Davis and the San Antonio Art League Contributor(s): Reaves, William E. (Author), Steinfeldt, Cecilia (Foreword by), Casagrande, Richard (Afterword by) |
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ISBN: 0890968209 ISBN-13: 9780890968208 Publisher: Texas A&M University Press OUR PRICE: $22.46 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 1998 Annotation: At a crucial moment in the development of Texas art, an eccentric oil wildcatter form Massachusetts and Luling, Texas, turned to the prestigious San Antonio Art League with a proposal. He would fund a national art competition featuring the state's verdant fields of wildflowers and bring prominence to Texas art if the league would handle the details. Thus was born the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions, which in three years at the end of the Roaring Twenties awarded more than $53,000 in prize money for paintings of Texas wildflowers, ranch life, and cotton farming. This presentation of twenty-nine color plates of the competitions' best works includes paintings by such important artists as Jose Arpa, Dawson Dawson-Watson, Xavier Gonzalez, Edward G. Eisenlohr, and Oscar E. Berninghaus and Herbert Dunton (the latter duo having also served as founding members of the Taos Society of Artists). In the plates, the artists have portrayed a variety of landscapes and atmospheres to present the wildflowers loved not only by Davis but by generations of Texas art enthusiasts. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Art | American - General - Art | Reference - Art | Subjects & Themes - General |
| Dewey: 758.420 |
| LCCN: 97024600 |
| Series: Joe & Betty Moore Texas Art (Paperback) |
| Physical Information: 0.37" H x 10.09" W x 10.05" (1.13 lbs) 144 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Deep South - Cultural Region - Gulf Coast - Cultural Region - South - Cultural Region - Southwest U.S. - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Geographic Orientation - Texas |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: At a crucial moment in the development of Texas art, an eccentric oil wildcatter turned to the prestigious San Antonio Art League with a proposal. He would fund a national art competition featuring the state's wildflowers if the league would handle the details. Thus were born the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibitions. A transplanted "Yankee trader," Edgar B. Davis had the mystical conviction that his success was intended for the public good. After developing the Luling oil field in the early 1920s, he established charitable foundations and gave generously to the arts. With a wordly sophistication and a special affection for Texas wildflowers, he offered substantial cash prizes to attract many of the nation's most prominent artists to the wildflower art competition. Davis later broadened the scope to include scenes of Texas' ranching and cotton industries. From this alliance of philanthropy and talent came what art historian Cecilia Steinfeldt calls "a milestone in the saga of Texas art history." Exhibitions in the late 1920s nurtured the state's emerging art community and fueled the regionalist movement that would reject impressionism and gain prominence in the 1930s. Twenty-nine color plates of the competitions' best work are reproduced here, including paintings by such artists as Jos Arpa, Dawson Dawson-Watson, and Oscar E. Berninghaus, and Herbert Dunton (founding members of the Taos Society of Artists). Eight more prize-winning works are included in black-and-white. Cecilia Steinfeldt's foreword places the competitions in historical perspective, and art appraiser and teacher Richard Casagrande comments on the paintings in an afterward. |