Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
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Period: Mid-20th Century
20th French Post Impressionist Oil Busy Summer Beach Scene Many Figures & Color
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Sur la Plage
by Josine Vignon (French 1922-2022)
signed lower right
oil painting on canvas, unframed
canvas: 20 x 25.5 inches
Colors: Yellow gold and warm colors, red, blue and ora...
Category
Post-Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Antibes
Located in Storrs, CT
Antibes. c. 1940. Oil on canvas laid down on board.x 8 7/8 x 9/8 . Fresh, bright colors. Signed E.D. Roth, lower left. Housed in an elegant 12 1/2 x 13 3/4 gold frame.
Antibes is a...
Category
American Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil, Pencil
Fox Hunt
Located in Hillsborough, NC
Oil painting of horses and hounds set on a country road, this is a contemporary 20th century landscape painting in excellent condition. The color is c...
Category
Realist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
1930's French Impressionist Lady in Red Dress Lounging In The Garden Shade
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Lady in Red
signed by Y. Blanchon, French 1950's Impressionist
oil on board, unframed
painting: 14 x 11 inches
provenance: from a large private collection of this artists work in N...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Napali - Landscape Painting - Oil On Canvas By Marc Zimmerman
Located in Carmel, CA
A turquoise sea sets off this tropical landscape of earthy colors of ocher and olive green. Pastel peach flowers accent an otherwise subtle color palette.
'Napali' - Landscape Pain...
Category
Contemporary Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Antique American School Modernist Abstract Expressionist Framed MCM Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Oil on board Framed.
Category
Modern Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
1930's French Impressionist River Bank Bare Tree Landscape
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Vintage French Oil Painting
by Louise Alix (French, 1888-1980) *see notes below
provenance stamp to the back
oil painting on board, unframed
measures: 6.75 high by 9.5 inches wide
...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Mr. and Mrs. Charles and Allison Coolidge (Belmont)
Located in Boston, MA
Dated and titled on stretcher: "'37/ Mr + Mrs Chas. Coolidge/ Allison/ -Belmont".
In 1929 Molly Luce and her husband, Alan Burroughs, moved from Garden Street on Beacon Hill in Bos...
Category
American Modern Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
1930's French Oil Painting Village Church In Green Landscape
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
French Landscape
signed by Louise Alix (French, 1888-1980) *see notes below
oil painting on artist paper, unframed
measures: 12 inches high by 14.5 inches wide
condition: overall ver...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Bahamian Fishermen Bahamas
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
Beautiful painting depicts Bahamian fishing boats by Phoebe Towbin. Bahamian Fishermen, 1952. Alkyd on masonite panel measuring 16.5 x 22.5 inches; 22.5 x 28.5 inches framed. Signed ...
Category
Realist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Masonite, Alkyd
Japanese Landscape and Cranes Painting on Silk #One
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
3874 Japanese gouache landscape with trees and cranes
Set in brass finish metal frame
Category
Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Gouache
Countryside Barn at Dusk below Mt. Tamalpais - Original Oil Pastel On Paper
Located in Soquel, CA
Countryside Barn at Dusk - Oil Pastel On Paper
Oil pastel drawing depicting a small wooden barn atop a country hillside by Oakland, California artist Grace Anna Pfister (American, 1...
Category
American Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Paper, Oil Pastel
Mid Century Southwest Desert Landscape in Oil on Canvas
Located in Soquel, CA
Mid Century Southwest Desert Landscape in Oil on Canvas
Vast Southwest plein air landscape of a desert scene with mountains, cacti, and other desert plants...
Category
American Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Tall Ship Seascape
By J. Niannino
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
#5-2758a Circa 1940's oil seascape on wood plaque,signed lower right by J.Niannino
Category
Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
The Garden Shed - Mid 20th Century Modern British Figurative Landscape Painting
Located in Sevenoaks, GB
A beautiful mid 20th century English oil on canvas depicting a figure in a garden with a ramshackle shed. Very good quality and unusual painting. Signed with a monogram and dated 195...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Suburbs of Paris
Located in Bayonne, NJ
Mykola Krychevsky created this landscape when he first arrived in Paris and lived in its suburbs. It is oil on canvas board, signed lower right. The artist at that time was in his fo...
Category
Modern Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Goodrich Castle on the River Wye, England with cattle watering oil painting
Located in ludlow, GB
Goodrich Castle on the River Wye, Herefordshire
Oil painting on panel, with oil sketch of Symonds Yat verso. Housed in handmade gold and coloured Whistler style frame.
Beautiful mi...
Category
Post-Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
1930's French Impressionist Watercolour Village Church Roofs Landscape
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Vintage French Painting
by Louise Alix (French, 1888-1980) *see notes below
provenance stamp to the back
watercolour painting on artist paper, unframed
measures: 8 high by 10 inche...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Watercolor
"La Madeleine" Impressionist 20th Century Parisian Street Scene Oil Painting
Located in New York, NY
In this piece, the artist depicts "La Madeleine" in an abstract and impressionistic way, capturing the magic of Paris from the 20th Century with much life. The flower sellers and tre...
Category
Post-Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Provence landscape by Edouard Arthur, Oil on canvas 82x66 cm
Located in Geneva, CH
Oil on canvas sold with frame
Total size with frame 90x74 cm
Edouard ARTHUR is an artist born in 1917 and died in 2002. His works have been sold at public auction 12 times, mainly ...
Category
Cubist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
View from artist's studio window
Located in Bayonne, NJ
View from artist studio’s window at Rue de Vaneau, Paris is a very unique cityscape that depicts a silhouette (possibly artist himself) walking down a windy and snowy street. This pa...
Category
Modern Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Iconic Central Park New York Cityscape Dakota Building Modernist Landscape Oil
Located in Buffalo, NY
Finely painted bright and brilliant modernist painting of new york city. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed.
Category
Abstract Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Antique American Pacific Coast Village Landscape by M. Stiefel 1940
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
#5-3453 A marine village seascape painting,oil on artist board displayed in a wood frame.Signed lower left by M.Stiefel
Category
Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
"La diga di Chebourg" Olio cm. 73 x 54 1938
Located in Torino, IT
Bellissimo paesaggio del paese della Normandia dove è avvenuto lo sbarco degli americani nel 1944
Spiaggia,Barche,Mare del Nord
Category
Post-Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
California Coastal Waves Seascape Original Oil on Canvas
Located in Soquel, CA
California Coastal Waves Seascape Original Oil on Canvas
Classic California seascape of coastal waves crashing on the rocks by San Mateo artist K. O. Buck (American, 20th century). ...
Category
American Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Vintage Midland, Texas Oil Painting by Alpha Lanham (1885-1972), ca 1950
Located in Baltimore, MD
This is a lovely oil on board landscape by noted Midland, Texas artist Alpha Johnson Lanham. It is a view of old stone steps within a landscape. The painting is an essay in paint a...
Category
Post-Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Coastal Cliffs Blue Sea French Impressionist Gouache Landscape
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Vintage French Painting
signed initials by Louise Alix (French, 1888-1980) *see notes below
provenance stamp to the back
gouache painting on artist paper, unframed
measures: 9 high...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Gouache
1930's French Impressionist Oil River Woodland Green Summer Landscape
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Vintage French Oil Painting
by Louise Alix (French, 1888-1980) *see notes below
provenance stamp to the back
oil painting on board, unframed
measures: 7.75 high by 9.5 inches wide
...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
New England Country Side Passage Landscape Oil Painting
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
3765 New England landscape painting
Set in a hand carved wood frame
Image size 7.5x9.5"
Category
Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Incredible American Modernist New York City Central Park Plaza View Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Really impressive mid 1900s American school painting of Central Park. An amazing piece with hints of abstraction. Framed. No signature found.
Category
Modern Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Red Roof Farm Barn Yard Gouache 1930's French Impressionist
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
French Landscape
signed by Y. Blanchon, French 1950's Impressionist
gouache on board, unframed
painting: 13 x 17.5 inches
provenance: from a large private collection of this artists...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Gouache
Alushta, Crimea
Located in Bayonne, NJ
A tiny oil on card painting that Vasyl Hryhorovych Krychevsky (1872-1952) created in 1935 in Crimea, Ukraine. V.H.Krychevsky is one of the founders of the Ukrainian Art Academy in Ky...
Category
Modern Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Antique American Impressionist Signed Seascape Lake Erie Framed Oil Painting
Located in Buffalo, NY
Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Image size, 15.5 x 14
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Mill in the marsh, Original Oil on Canvas, Signed, French Expressionist
Located in PARIS, FR
*Dimensions include the frame
Claude Grosperrin's artwork is a vivid exploration of texture and abstraction, capturing the essence of a rustic landscape with a palpable sense of ene...
Category
Expressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
1930's French Oil Painting Dark River Woodland Landscape
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
French Landscape
by Louise Alix (French, 1888-1980) *see notes below
provenance stamp to the back
oil painting on board, unframed
measures: 7.75 high by 9.5 inches wide
condition: o...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
At the Lock, Oil on canvas 20th Century Landscape Painting, Signed and Dated '66
Located in London, GB
Oil on canvas, signed and dated '66' lower left
Image size: 13 x 35 3/4 inches (33 x 91 cm)
Original frame
Here, the physical forms that make up the water lock and canal boats have ...
Category
Futurist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
20th Century French Post Impressionist Barn Brittany landscape Oil Signed
Located in Sempach, LU
Landscape barn in Brittany_ from M. Rousset
In 1872, his name is mentioned for the exhibition of Fine arts in Paris. He exhibited close to Eugène Delacroix, Coignard, Daubigny a...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil, Canvas
1930's French Impressionist Daises In Brown Vase On Yellow Table Interior
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Daisies
signed by Y. Blanchon, French 1950's Impressionist
gouache on an old artist note pad, unframed
painting: 17 x 13 inches
provenance: from a large private collection of this a...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Gouache
Landscape oil Painting, Garden landscape, mountain landscape, French art
Located in AIGNAN, FR
Vintage landscape oil painting on canvas by French artist Marie Marguerite Reol (1880-1963) Garden landscape in the fore with a backdrop of mountains, most likely to be the Pyrenees....
Category
Post-Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
Quai des bouquinistes- Impressionist Figures in Landscape Oil - Jules Rene Herve
Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
Signed figures in cityscape oil on original canvas circa 1950 by French impressionist painter Jules Rene Herve. The piece depicts a view of a bookseller's stall beside the River Seine in Paris, France, with blossom trees overhead.
Signature:
Signed lower left & again verso
Dimensions:
Framed: 21"x24"
Unframed: 13"x16"
Provenance:
The Dominion Gallery - Montreal - Canada
Jules Rene Hervé began his formal art studies in an evening school in Langres, France. Hervé was trained at the Ecole nationale supérieure d’arts decoratifs of Paris, and studied with Fernand Cormon and Jules Adler...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Impressionist European City View Landscape 1966
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
3973 European City Scape oil paint on artist board 1966
Image size 19.5x15.5"
I
Category
Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
French Impressionist Paris Street Scene, Oil on Canvas
Located in Cotignac, FR
French mid-century Impressionist oil on canvas view of a busy Paris Street scene by Vorretto. The painting is signed bottom right and presented in a fine moulded and carved gilt fram...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
House In The Woods, 1964 - Original Oil Painting On Masonite
Located in Soquel, CA
House In The Woods, 1964 - Original Oil Painting On Masonite
1964 Original oil painting by New York area artist Dickson (American, 20th C), depicting a small house surrounded by tre...
Category
American Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Masonite, Oil
Fall in the California Foothills Original Oil Painting 1950s
Located in Soquel, CA
Fall in the California Foothills Original Oil Painting 1950s
Well executed California Oil painting of the Lower Foothills near Santa Cruz, Californ...
Category
American Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Antique Venice Canal Seascape Landscape Oil Painting 1940
Located in Douglas Manor, NY
3937 Antique oil painting on artist board set in a period gilt frame
Image size 17.5x23.5"
Category
Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
WWII Wartime Painting Rouen after Bombing & Bombardment.Cathedral & River Seine
Located in Sutton Poyntz, Dorset
Paul-Jean Anderbouhr.
French ( b.1909 - d.2006 ).
The Ravages of War on Rouen, 1944.
Oil on Canvas.
Signed lower left.
Image size 23.2 inches x 28.5 inches ( 59cm x 72.5cm ).
Frame s...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Donkey Rides - Impressionist Figures in Landscape Oil by Jules Rene Herve
Located in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
Signed figures and animals in cityscape oil on canvas circa 1940 by French impressionist painter Jules Rene Herve. This large piece depicts a view of Paris on a bright summer's day. Children enjoy donkey rides in the shade of the green trees and there is a view of the Champs-Elysees.
Signature:
Signed lower left & again verso
Dimensions:
Framed: 40"x48"
Unframed: 32"x40"
Provenance:
Private UK collection
Jules Rene Hervé began his formal art studies in an evening school in Langres, France. Hervé was trained at the Ecole nationale supérieure d’arts decoratifs of Paris, and studied with Fernand Cormon and Jules Adler...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
Chartres - English Impressionist France Town Landscape Oil on Canvas Painting
Located in Sevenoaks, GB
A beautiful signed and dated 1940 impressionist oil on canvas depicting the city Chartres in northern France with it's famous cathedral, by Faith Ash...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
1930's French Gouache Purple Cliffs Orange Sea Landscape
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Vintage French Painting
by Louise Alix (French, 1888-1980) *see notes below
provenance stamp to the back
gouache painting on artist paper, unframed
measures: 6 high by 8 inches wid...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Gouache
French Abstract Expressionist Signed Oil Large Composition 20th Century
Located in Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Abstract Expressionist Composition
by Gerard Guegueniat (French 1970's)
signed oil painting on board,
framed: 40 x 24.5 inches
board: 36 x 21 inches
provenance: private collection, ...
Category
Impressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Oil
I. Mundo vertical. BARCELONA STREET original watercolor painting
By Ignasi Mundó
Located in CORAL GABLES - MIAMI, FL
BARCELONA STREET original watercolor painting.
MUNDO Ignasi
Ignasi Mundó trained at the School of La Lonja, with Joaquín Mir, Mariano Pidelaserra and Manolo Hugué. In 1945 he recei...
Category
Expressionist Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Paper, Watercolor
Victoria Train Station, Oil on canvas Landscape, Signed, 20thC British Artist
Located in London, GB
Oil on canvas, signed bottom right
Image size: 30 1/4 x 24 1/2 inches (77 x 62.25 cm)
Hand made frame
This is an atmospheric depiction of Victoria Train Station from the mid 20th ce...
Category
Modern Mid-20th Century Landscape Paintings
Materials
Canvas, Oil
"PRICKLY PEAR PATH " TEXAS HILL COUNTRY CACTUS Frame Size: 21 x 25
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...
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