The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968 Page: 76
686 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
lection at the Red River Valley fair in 1934, Catherine Wharton wrote
a series of articles about him for the Sherman Daily Democrat. Though
the account is extensive, it is still not certain what Smith had been
doing the previous twenty years. Miss Wharton's sensitive treatment
notes, somewhat sadly, that at the age of forty-eight Erwin Smith, boss
of the Bermuda ranch near Bonham, "is a rancher without a real
ranch; a cowboy away from the range; an artist without a studio; a
photographer without a darkroom. He is a man who has done what
no other man in the world has ever done as thoroughly, though the
job isn't finished." Optimistically, she concludes, "He hopes to get
back into a studio. Back to his pictures. There is a great deal to be
done with them, and for them. Out of them should come the results
of that first vision Erwin E. Smith had of putting cowboy life 'into
the round.' ""'
From what is known, Smith did none of these things. He left his
pictures largely uncatalogued; the folio of selected pictures he wanted
published was never, in his lifetime, printed; no clay models were
cast in bronze. He lived alone with his mother on the small place
outside Bonham where he died of cancer at the age of sixty-one on
September 4, 1947, seven months after the death of his mother. He
was buried in Honey Grove, where he was born." For over thirty
years his life seems to have been unproductive, purged of all the
artistic goals he had enthusiastically set for himself. The business of
managing a small ranch does not satisfactorily explain his inactivity in
the arts. Perhaps there are answers not yet found.
But it is not enough just to wonder what happened to Erwin Smith,
the artist, during the last thirty years of his life. That becomes impor-
tant only because of the great contribution he made to art during
those early years. Writing a review of Life on the Texas Range, a 1952
collection of eighty Smith photographs with text and introduction by
J. Evetts Haley, Tom Lea, writer-artist, said:
Thinking about it carefully, I don't mean the best photographs 1
ever saw on the subject. I mean the best pictures. That includes paint-
ings, drawings, and prints. To me, Erwin Smith's best work stands right
there at the top.
I don't know how he did it, how he made a piece of glass in the
tront of an old 'screen-focus Kodak' the eye of an artist. I don't know
"'Sherman Daily Democrat, September 27, 1934. The whole series in this newspaper
ran September 27-October 2, 1934.
"Haley, Life on the Texas Range, 29.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 71, July 1967 - April, 1968, periodical, 1968; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117145/m1/94/?rotate=270: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.