Harry Anthony DeYoung (1893-1956)

Harry Anthony DeYoung was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 5, 1893. He was a landscape, figure, genre, and portrait painter, muralist, draftsman and teacher. He studied with Edward John Lake and John W. Norton at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and taught art classes for children in Chicago from 1914-1916. He was an honor student in 1917 at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied with F. de Forrest Schook and John Warner Norton. DeYoung served as a sergeant in the quartermaster corps during the last two years of World War I, 1917-1918. Back in Chicago following the War, he was active in teaching, as well as painting. In 1922, he was an assistant instructor at Bailey's Harbor Summer School of Art, Michigan; in 1923-1924, director of the Glenwood School of Landscape Painting, Illinois; director of the Midwest Summer School of Art, Paw Paw, Michigan, in 1924-1929; and instructor at the National Academy of Art, Chicago, 1927-1928. After coming to San Antonio for the Edgar B. Davis Art Competition, DeYoung founded the DeYoung Art School there in 1928. Over the years before settling in Texas, he conducted a summer painting camp at Fort Davis and plein-air classes in Texas at Port Isabel, Eagle Pass, Abilene, Brownwood, and Boerne, as well as in New Mexico, and Monterrey, Mexico. At Sul Ross State Teachers College, Alpine, he became director of the Summer School of Art in 1940. DeYoung taught summer classes in Brownwood and tri-monthly classes in Brownsville. His murals include those at the St. Anthony Hotel, San Antonio, that were subsequently destroyed; and depictions of basket-maker Indians in West Texas, at the Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio. After a paralyzing stroke in 1942 resulted in his hospitalization in Waco, the artist learned to paint with his left hand, continuing his career in art for another fourteen years before his death in 1956 in Waco. Harry DeYoung died on January 9, 1956, and is buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, San Antonio. Some of the artist's awards include the Fine Arts Building Purchase Prize of $500 at the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1925; and honorable mention in landscape painting at the American Artists Exhibition of Chicago. In 1927 he received honorable mention at the Chicago Galleries Association. In the Edgar B. Davis Competitive Exhibition in San Antonio in 1928 he won the member prize of $200. DeYoung was a member of the All-Illinois Society of Artists; Chicago Galleries Association; Chicago Painters and Sculptors Association; San Antonio Art League; Society of Texas Artists; Texas Federated Art Association; Texas Fine Arts Association; and Villita Street Gallery, San Antonio. DeYoung's portraits of notables including Davey Crockett are in the collection of The Alamo in San Antonio. Other San Antonio collections holding his paintings are the Witte Museum; Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum; Brackenridge High School; the St. Anthony Hotel; and San Antonio Art League (his painting, "Cinchin' Up". De Young's work is also found at the Historical House Museum, Boerne; Brownsville Art League Museum; Fort Davis High School; Torch Energy Advisors, Inc., Houston; Moore Collection, Los Angeles, California; Harold Swift Collection and Fenger High School, Chicago; Gary High School, Indiana; Hammond High School, Indiana; Susan B. Allen Memorial Hospital, El Dorado, Kansas; and Lincoln High School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Harold DeYoung's exhibitions include: Art Institute of Chicago, American Artists Exhibition, and the Art Institute of Chicago.