Jose Arpa

"Brackenridge Park" San Antonio Texas.

Circa 1920s

Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 12 x 16 Frame Size: 19 x 23 Medium: Oil on Canvas "Sleeping Lady Mountain" Iztaccihuatl, Volcano in Mexico 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 officers 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...

James Boren (1921 - 1990) Waxahatchie, Texas / Oklahoma Artist / Member Cowboy Artists of America Image Size: 28 x 42 Frame Size: 40 x 53 Medium: Oil "Ca...

Robert Wood (G. Day) (1889 -1979) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 25 x 30 Frame Size: 33 x 38 Medium: Oil "April" Texas Hill Country Bluebonnets 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...

Jose Vives-Atsara (1919-2004) San Antonio Artist Image Size: 36 x 60 Frame Size: 45 x 69 Medium: Oil Applied By Palette Knife 1990-1991 "La Sala De Vallformosa" Penedes Biography Jose Vives-Atsara (1919-2004) San Antonio Artist Jose Vives-Atsara was born April 13, 1919 in Vilafranca 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...

Melvin Warren (1920 - 1995) Texas Artist Image Size: 22 x 36 Frame Size: 32 x 46 Medium: Oil Dated 1987 "Trail To Eagle Nest" Western Snow Scene Biography Melvin Warren (1920 - 1995) Melvin Charles Warren (March 19, 1920-August 4, 1995) For western art to achieve the distinction of fine art, it must first satisfy an artistic criteria and only then deal with the particularity of western subject matter. Melvin Warren understands this concept. His work is an accomplished artistic statement that also presents images which are faithful to western reality. Warren was born in California in 1920 and lived in Arizona and New Mexico before coming to Texas at the age of fourteen. He has seen the beauty and felt the lure of the Southwest and it stimulated his boyhood desire to be an artist. After service in World War II, Warren entered Texas Christian University and received a degree in fine arts. During the day, he worked in the best tradition of commercial art work, and in the evenings he painted out the western fantasies that crowded his mind. These paintings and the process of creating them encouraged Warren to seek a gallery outlet. The subtle sensitivity to his subject matter and an obvious control of the technical elements of painting made his work readily acceptable to a broad range of collectors. He became a special favorite of Lyndon Johnson who ultimately acquired many Warren oils. Melvin C. Warren is buried at Clifton Memorial Park, Clifton, Bosque County, Texas. The artist was born in Los Angeles, California in 1920. He died in Clifton, Texas in 1995. The artist lived as a child on ranches throughout California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. He served in the Air Force during WWII. Warren earned a degree in Fine Art from Texas Christian University in 1952 and also studied under Samuel Ziegler. His palette emphasizes earth tones -browns, reds, yellows. His subject matter emphasizes the history of the West - cattle trails and frontier forts. He was a member of the Cowboy Artists...

Ross Stefan (1934-1999) Arizona / Wisconsin Artist Image Size: 16 x 22 Frame Size: 25 x 31 Medium: Oil "South of Taos, New Mexico. Rio Grande Rancho, Lupe'...

A stunning depiction of boats docked in a Cape Cod harbor. Nemethy uses a bold impressionistic technique with thick use of paint and wonderful impressi...

Sunny day in the forest. 1977, cardboard, oil, 21.5x26 cm Edgars Vinters (1919-2014) Edgars Vinters is working in oil, watercolor and monotype techniques. He paints landscapes in di...

Hay stacks. 1981. Oil on cardboard, 22x30 cm

In crafting this piece, I immersed myself in the serene yet vibrant essence of winter. Through impressionistic strokes in oil, I aimed to capture the intricate dance of light and sha...

"Best of Times" is an original oil on canvas and measures 60x70 inches. Cook shows his passion for capturing natural beauty in this Italian landscape of Venice, Italy. The impression...

Very well executed tonalist work of a sunset over Amsterdam Harbor in Holland by the well known American artist, George McCord. Signed lower right with A.N.A following the signature which stands for Associate of the National Academy. Circa 1890. Condition is good. The painting is oil on canvas (relined) and is housed in an semi-antique style gold ornate frame. Frame is in very good condition. Overall framed measurements are 30 by 35 inches. Provenance: A Sarasota, Florida estate. GEORGE HERBERT McCORD (1848-1909) Born on August 1, 1848 in Manhattan, New York, George Herbert McCord was considered a central figure of the second generation Hudson River painters. While McCord described himself as mostly self-taught, he attended the Hudson River Institute and the Claverack Academy in New York. He also spent time studying in the studios of Samuel Morse...