Jerry Bywaters

Art Brokerage: Jerry Bywaters American Artist: b. 1906-1989. Williamson Gerald Bywaters (1906-1989) was an American artist, university professor, museum director, art critic and a historian of the Texas region. Jerry Bywater's career and life's work focused on elevating the quality of Texas art, attracting national recognition to the art of the region and lifting it above provincialism. Bywaters produced landscapes, still lifes and portrait paintings, as well as lithographic prints and murals. In 1933 Art Digest recognized Bywaters as an artist of national importance. His paintings in museum collections include On the Ranch (1941) at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; Where the Mountain Meets the Plains, at Southern Methodist University; and Oil Field Girls (1940), at the Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin. In 1935 Bywaters began making prints using lithography as a way to make art affordable, hoping the middle class could buy them and popularize Texas regional art. He pioneered the style later termed "Lone Star Regionalism" and he was recognized as "one of the finest of the regional print makers". An early Bywaters lithograph was Gargantua (1935), which won a prize in the 1935 Allied Arts Exhibition. Another, Ranch Hand and Pony (1938), was exhibited at the 1938 Venice Biennial Exposition. Bywaters was a founding member of Lone Star Printmakers, a group of Texas artists who created editions of original prints which they promoted with touring exhibitions from 1938 to 1941. Bywaters participated in New Deal art programs, winning mural competitions. In collaborations with other Dallas artists he completed six projects in Texas, including a series of panels in collaboration with Alexandre Hogue at the Old City Hall in Dallas; a series of panels at the Paris Public Library; and one mural each in the post offices of Trinity, Quanah, and Farmersville. Other murals were installed at the Parcel Post Building of Houston. In 1981, Bywaters gave his numerous papers and clipping on the art and artists of the region to Southern Methodist University, founding the Bywaters Collection on Art of the Southwest. Bywaters lived in Dallas with his wife Mary McLarry Bywaters until his death on March 7, 1989. Listings wanted.