The Lost Colony: 1921-1950
Texas Regionalist Paintings
By Mary Bones
Curator & Collection Manager,
Museum of the Big Bend
Kokernot Lodge, Oil, ca. 1930s, 36 X 48, Julius Woeltz, Museum of the Big Bend
When Sul Ross Normal College opened
its doors in the summer of 1920, its primary goal was to prepare prospective
teachers to earn their Texas teaching certificates. By the summer of 1921, the Department of Drawing was formed and
headed by Mrs. Nellie Clements. For the
next 12 years other instructors held this
position including Beatrice Matthaei,
1921-1922, Mabel Vandiver, 1922-1925,
Anna E. Kenner, 1925-1926, and Elizabeth Keefer, 1926-1932. During this period, the Department of Drawing became
a full fledged Art Department, where students could earn a degree in art. Importantly, instructors included in their
coursework, en plein air or outdoor painting, using the Big Bend country as their
classroom. All of these women after leaving Sul Ross continued in their artistic
pursuits and have since been recognized
for their contributions to the regional art
movement.
By the summer of 1932, Julius Woeltz
was hired to teach the regular Drawing
Art classes. He contacted Ms. Aline
Rather to help him and Xavier Gonzalez
to conduct and Art Colony during the first
six weeks of the summer session. Woeltz,
Gonzalez and Rather had known each
other for many years prior in San Antonio.
Gonzalez was the nephew of the
renowned early Texas artist, Jose Arpa of
San Antonio and he was an assistant at
Arpa’s art school. While Gonzalez was in
San Antonio he wasinvolved with a teaching project at the Witte Memorial Museum. This project entailed working with
students from the San Antonio public
schools who showed exceptional artistic
skills. Aline Rather, who was the supervisor of Art for the San Antonio Public
Schools, selected the students and one of
the students that Gonzalez worked with
was Julius Woeltz.
During the first summer session, Gonzalez divided his time between public
school drawing and private instruction of
artists and teachers who enrolled in the
Art Colony. Gonzalez would emphasize
landscape, still-life and portrait in both.
The $25 fee for Art Colony participants
included trips into the Davis Mountains,
the “Education Tour to Chihuahua City”
in June and the student could take addi-
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