Double Mountain
Josephine Oliver joined Reaugh's painting campaign in 1925 “to sketch Double Mountain. The impressive peak was among Reaugh's favorite sites. At an elevation of 2,400 feet, the mountain dominates the surrounding plain, expressing a stalwart grandeur. As a well-known Texas landmark, Double Mountain evokes the state's exploratory history.” (Lawton and Vogel, 2007)
In 1932, Oliver again painted her impressionistic pastels of the Brazos Canyonlands, including the Double Mountain. This grand, beautiful view continues to be painted and photographed by today's artists.
The Amon Carter Museum has added works of Josephine Oliver to its collection, as well as paintings by L.O. Griffith.
Josephine Oliver
Untitled (Landscape with view of Double Mountain)
Earth & Sky
The Pastels of Josephine Oliver-Travis (1908-1991)
In 2007, the Valley House Gallery in Dallas and the Museum of Art in Tyler hosted an extensive exhibit of over seventy pastels, sketched on the Reaugh expeditions between 1923 and 1933, including the painting of Tule Canyon shown below.
To view five other examples of artwork by this remarkable “Renaissance-woman,”, you can visit the archived online exhibit through the Tyler Museum of Art.
L.O. Griffith & Josephine Oliver
Rebecca E. Lawton, Curator of Paintings and Sculptures at the Amon Carter Museum and Kevin Vogel, Director of Valley House Gallery have co-written two recent books on Griffith and Oliver: Louis Oscar Griffith, Rediscovering a Texas Printmaker and Earth & Sky, the Pastels of Josephine Oliver Travis (1908-1991).
These two books focus on recently located works of Griffith and Oliver from this period and greatly enlarge our knowledge of the two artists, of their teacher Frank Reaugh, and of a fascinating period, when artists first ventured into the Texas frontier.
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