Mary SmithArt 3032

Sharon Warwick, InstructorArt Lesson

“Picturing Texas”1846 – 1856

Mary

Objectives

• Discover how to decode an artwork for information using critical thinking

• Learn about early Texas artists to determine why their drawings and watercolors of same

geographic locations and people vary so much in style

• Create an original artwork and personal narrative of an important object, place, person, or event in

their own lives

Materials Needed

• Images from Encountering Texas• Texas map

• Paper• Markers

• Paint• Colored pencils

• Construction paper• Scissors

• glue

Activity

Students will write a story about a person, place or an event that is important to them and draw a painting to depict the meaning of their story

Vocabulary• History

Ask students to define History and lists ways we can learn about the past

Teks7.1A Illustrate ideas from direct observation, imagination,

personal experience, and school and community events• 7.21D identify points of view from the historical context

surrounding an event and the frame of reference that influences the participants

About the Artist: Sarah Ann Lillie Hardinge (1824–1913) A sense of wide-eyed wonder is apparent in the watercolors that document Sarah Hardinge’s years in Texas just after the War with Mexico, when immigrants poured into the state intent on taking their share of the cheap land. Perhaps no other record offers as full a picture of early Texas settlement as the pictorial diary of Hardinge, who saw the Texas frontier from a woman’s point of view—as a place to establish a home and raise a family. In 1850 Hardinge inherited from her brother a large parcel of Texas land located on the east side of the Colorado River in Matagorda County, about ninety miles southwest of Houston. Not long after she married Dr. George Hardinge in November 1851, the couple set out from their home in Brooklyn to claim Mrs. Hardinge’s inheritance and establish a life in Texas. She began immediately to make a visual record of the still little-known country that would be her new home.Her watercolors follow the Hardinges’ efforts to settle in Texas, from their arrival in Austin in February 1852 to their moves to the area around Seguin and, later, San Antonio. Understandably, Hardinge’s first painting was of her new residence in Texas, the handsome home of Thomas William Ward, mayor of Austin and commissioner of the General Land Office. The Ward house must have seemed a hopeful sign of the prosperity that awaited her and her husband. Sadly, such prosperity as the Wards knew in Austin in the early 1850s was not to be for Sarah Hardinge, for within a few years her husband had squandered their opportunities. Besides financial trouble, Sarah Hardinge was also troubled by her fear of American Indians and her oldest son’s poor health. In 1856, the Hardinges were forced to return to her family home in Boston with their three children born on the Texas frontier. George Hardinge continued to speculate wildly with his wife’s inheritance, and he probably returned to Texas in 1857. Sarah Hardinge divorced him for “desertion” in 1865, and she married the Reverend Harrison Daniels ten years later.

About the Artist: James Gilchrist Benton (1820–1881)

Benton did not serve in the War with Mexico, as Edward Everett did, but was posted to San Antonio at the war’s end to serve as inspector of arsenals at the ordnance depot there. A graduate of West Point and a specialist in the design and testing of small-scale artillery equipment, Benton was also trained as a topographical draftsman. He applied his drawing skills to recording the scenery in and around San Antonio during the three years he was stationed there. He was a sensitive observer and possessed an artist’s eye, for his drawings are more than just reportorial vignettes: they are poetic studies of the romance of San Antonio evoked by its old Spanish architecture and its mix of ethnically diverse people.

Close

Write a short story about the painting they will be creating. In the story tell how and why it is important to them.

4 3 2 1 0

Able to discuss 5 or more differences and similarities of the painting

Able to discuss 3 or more of the differences and similarities of the painting

Able to discuss 2 or more of the differences and similarities of the painting

Able to discuss at least one of the painting

Non participation

If the student was very creative and put a lot of thought into the story and the painting

If the student put some thought into the story and painting

If the student put little thought into the story and painting

Little thought in story and painting

Non participation

Rubric