Wagon Train by John Laurie Wallace

(1864 - 1953) Oil on slate; 9" x 18". With a 64-year career as a portrait painter in Omaha, he was regarded as one of the city's outstanding artists. His subjects included many of Nebraska's prominent citizens, such as William Jennings Bryan. At age 16, he studied under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1881, he headed west and painted ortraits of cattle barons in New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado, then with strong recommendations from Eakins, spent six years in Chicago as director of the Art League and instructor at the Art Institute. He helped organize the Chicago Society of Artists, severed as their first president, and then in 1893, was on the art jury of the World's Columbian Exposition. In 1890, he served on the jury of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha of 1898. He was a strong advocate of realist-style art, much appalled by modernist influences. He taught classes regularly emphasizing realism and his own work was straightforward. He lived well during his lifetime, charging $400 per painting.