In the 1930s and 1940s, along with other members of a loosely 
affiliated group of artists known as the Dallas Nine, Jerry 
Bywaters pioneered the style later termed "Lone Star 
Regionalism." Working with equal ability in oil, watercolor, 
tempera, and pastel, Bywaters portrayed the natural world, towns, 
and people of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and West Texas. 
This stunning retrospective volume of Bywaters's paintings—
more than forty of them arranged in a full-color gallery—vividly 
interprets the American Southwest.

    Underlying all of Bywaters's work was some perspective on 
the interaction of people and the land. With character always the 
central feature, his portraiture featured a wide variety of subjects, 
from a prominent Dallas architect to two anonymous nuns the 
artist saw on a train and an unnamed member of the Navajo tribe 
he met on a visit to Shiprock, Arizona. He also depicted 
individuals in various tasks of everyday life, whether cowboys at 
a rodeo, oil field workers wrestling with a drill bit, or Mexican 
women washing clothes in a stream.

    In addition to the color gallery, the text is illustrated with 
letters, photographs, and ephemera from the artist's papers, the 
Jerry Bywaters Collection on Art of the Southwest, housed in 
SMU's Jake and Nancy Hamon Arts Library. Essays by three 
scholars who knew and worked with Bywaters—Sam Ratcliffe, 
John Lunsford, and Francine Carraro—add context and detail 
about his contributions, and an introduction by William H. Gerdts 
sets the stage for appreciating the art.

    Bywaters directed the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (now the 
Dallas Museum of Art) for two decades beginning in 1943. This 
book originated in conjunction with the exhibition, "Jerry Bywaters, 
Interpreter of the Southwest," at SMU's Meadows Museum of Art, 
November 30, 2007–February 24, 2008.

_________________________________________________________

SAM DESHONG RATCLIFFE, who earned a Ph.D. in American 
studies from the University of Texas at Austin, is head of special 
collections in the Hamon Arts Library at Southern Methodist 
University, which holds the Jerry Bywaters Collection on Art of the 
Southwest. He has taught courses on the history and literature of 
Texas and the American West in SMU's history department and 
MLA program. His publications, including Painting Texas History to 
1900, have won a number of awards.


Number Fifteen: Joe and Betty Moore Texas Art Series


What people are saying about this book

"A pleasure of colors and manageable heft . . ."—County Line 
Magazine, February 2008

" . . . this handsomely illustrated volume offers an overview of the 
vision and versatility—he paints in oil, watercolor, tempera, and 
pastel—of the painter Jerry Bywaters."—Art Times, December 2007