GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Jerry Bywaters was an important voice in the arts in Texas, having trained in Dallas and in the East with Robert Vonnoh, Bruce Crane, and John Sloan. He was a founder of the Dallas Artists League, editor of the magazine Southwestern Arts, a critic for the Dallas Morning News, and director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts from 1942 until his retirement in 1964. While many regional artists in the prewar years were painting nostalgic anecdotal visions of America, Bywaters took a different tack. Like a memento mori still life of an earlier century, Study for On the Ranch, as well as Bywater's painting On the Ranch, are eerie assemblages of detritus cataloguing the history of Texas—from the American Indian symbolized by the arrowhead, to the gunslinger, the cowpoke, the rancher who fenced in the range, and the vanished inhabitants of Bywaters's own time, driven from the ranch perhaps by the blows of depression and drought.
Adapted from
Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 274.
NOTES
Related Object
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin: Texas (state/United States): TGN: 7007826
Place of origin: Southwest (general region/United States): TGN: 4010660
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
Before 1985: Williamson Gerald [Jerry] Bywaters, Dallas, TX (1906-1989)
From 1985: Dallas Museum of Art, purchased from the artist. (Gift of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr., Dallas Museum of Art)
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
- Jerry Bywaters in SMU Digital Collections~Check out hundreds works by this artist in the SMU Central University Libraries Texas Artists: Paintings, Sculpture, Works on Paper collection.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
TEACHING IDEAS
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Apply to objects where number equals 1985.123
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General Description
Jerry Bywaters was an important voice in the arts in Texas, having trained in Dallas and in the East with Robert Vonnoh, Bruce Crane, and John Sloan. He was a founder of the Dallas Artists League, editor of the magazine Southwestern Arts, a critic for the Dallas Morning News, and director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts from 1942 until his retirement in 1964. While many regional artists in the prewar years were painting nostalgic anecdotal visions of America, Bywaters took a different tack. Like a memento mori still life of an earlier century, Study for On the Ranch, as well as Bywater's painting On the Ranch, are eerie assemblages of detritus cataloguing the history of Texas—from the American Indian symbolized by the arrowhead, to the gunslinger, the cowpoke, the rancher who fenced in the range, and the vanished inhabitants of Bywaters's own time, driven from the ranch perhaps by the blows of depression and drought.
Adapted from
Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 274.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Jerry Bywaters in SMU Digital Collections~Check out hundreds works by this artist in the SMU Central University Libraries Texas Artists: Paintings, Sculpture, Works on Paper collection.
Notes
Related Object
Catalogue essays
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Place of origin: Texas (state/United States): TGN: 7007826
Place of origin: Southwest (general region/United States): TGN: 4010660
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
Before 1985: Williamson Gerald [Jerry] Bywaters, Dallas, TX (1906-1989)
From 1985: Dallas Museum of Art, purchased from the artist. (Gift of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr., Dallas Museum of Art)
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
rules
Apply To
Objects
number
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1985.123
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object_notes_3_c-0194.xml.nores