The Life and Work of Julian Onderdonk

After writing the ground post, I was reminded of Julian Onderdonk’s work. He was a master of painting the ground, often studded with bluebonnets, cactus, and other wildflowers. His work is iconic of the Texan landscape (with bluebonnets being the official state flower of Texas).

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole reading about his life and work. I have enjoyed his work for many years, but I didn’t know much about him as a person or as an artist. Turns out, he was much more than just a “bluebonnet painter”. Here’s what I learned, followed by a showcase of his paintings.

He was born in San Antonio in 1882. His father, Robert Onderdonk, was an accomplished artist and was often called “The Dean of Texas Painters.” He was Julian’s first teacher. What a tremendous benefit it is to be raised by an artist. Not just because of the obvious teaching benefits. But also because you don’t need to jump over the common hurdle of justifying why you want to become an artist in the first place.

He later studied under Kenyon Cox and Frank Vincent DuMond at the Art Students League in New York. And then with William Merritt Chase at his Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art. Chase pushed Onderdonk towards landscape painting rather than portraiture, which proved to be the right move. Interestingly, Chase also taught his father a few years prior.

(Sidenote: A common theme with many of the great artists I write about is… they often had great, sometimes famous teachers. So, spend time finding great teachers, and when you find one, hold onto them and learn whatever you can from them!)

Onderdonk’s early years were hard. He lived the typical starving-artist life, with piling bills and a growing family to support (a young wife and two children). To make ends meet, he churned out paintings under pseudonyms and sold them to New York department stores. They were mostly marine and landscape paintings signed under names such as “Roberto Vasquez,” “Chas. Turner,” “Chase Turner,” or “Elbert H. Turner.” James Baker wrote a book about these early years, Julian Onderdonk in New York: The Lost Years, the Lost Paintings. It’s on my reading list and I’ll let you know what it’s like.

There’s a good takeaway here. With many of history’s great artists, we tend to get a rose-colored view of their lives and work. But the road to their success was often paved with much hardship and struggle. And many of them set aside their artistic integrity to make ends meet in the early years. I’m sure Onderdonk didn’t want to churn out painting after painting to sell to department stores under pseudonyms. But it allowed him to continue painting and progressing as an artist. Sometimes that trade-off is required. The art journey isn’t always glamorous, but perhaps that’s what makes it exciting.

Onderdonk’s iconic bluebonnet paintings came relatively late in his career. He started painting them around 1911 after moving back to San Antonio in 1909. The first was Spring Morning (below). What a beautiful painting, with the bluebonnet and cactus-studded ground against the glowing background.

Jeffrey Morseburg provides some interesting commentary on bluebonnets and their significance to Onderdonk’s work in his artist biography. He wrote:

“Each spring, a number of varieties of blue lupin blanket the hillsides of the Texas countryside, sometimes by themselves and, on other occasions, mixed in with other wildflowers. In the bluebonnet, the artist found a subject he truly enjoyed painting and we must remember that in those early days of Texas art, before color printing was in widespread use, bluebonnet paintings were not yet the commercial staple they would become.”

Onderdonk wrote of bluebonnets:

“I like the bluebonnet because a field of this Texas flower seems just to have burst from the ground and it trembles subtly, making it beautiful.”

They turned out to be a commercial success. And for better or worse, Onderdonk’s name became closely tied to his bluebonnet paintings. In his later years, he did resist being pigeonholed as the “bluebonnet painter.” With his success came many imitators and a sense of cliché to the subject. As folklorist J. Frank Dobie put it: “Seizing upon the flower’s popularity, every dauber in the country tries his hand at painting it, and bluebonnet chromes are as plentiful as cowboy figures on pulp magazine covers. Yet no amount of commercialism, no fad running into insipidity, no betrayal in the name of art, can detract from the essential loveliness of the flower springing on the hills and in the valley of Texas, yielding a passion of blossom, a splendor of spread.”

He died young and suddenly in 1922 at 40, after a brief illness and appendicitis issues. He was at the peak of his success. Below was the last bluebonnet painting that he was working on. He didn’t get a chance to complete it, though he must have been close.

His studio was moved to the grounds of the Witte Museum in San Antonio and is on permanent display. The Dallas Museum of Art also dedicates several rooms to showcasing his work.

The following are a few other paintings by Onderdonk. Not just of bluebonnets, but also of other landscapes and even a portrait.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you ever want to learn more, start with our fundamentals course.

Happy painting!

Dan Scott

Draw Paint Academy