Seth Floyd Crews 1873-1958

Crews,Seth Floyd. 1873-1958.  El Paso.  Landscape and portrait painter, graphic artist, commercial artist, muralist, stained-glass designer, writer, interior decorator.
      Born in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, Crews moved to Chicago as a youth where he later attended the Art Institute of Chicago.  For several years, he owned and operated a Chicago advertising-art studio, employing fourteen artist and specializing in theater posters.  He also provided illustrations for the early Red Book magazine and was art editor of Wayside Tales. Around 1916 he moved to New York where he furnished theatrical posters, decorations, and scenic designs for such places as the Winter Garden and Hippodrome; in 1917 he took up portrait painting.  
      After his wife, artist Anabel Buckham, was killed in a 1918 automobile accident,  Crews began painting landscapes in New Mexico while living on his sister's ranch near Alamogordo.  He eventually settled in El Paso in 1925.  There he became a popular portraitist and produced lithographs of his landscapes that he sold to the chamber of commerce for tourist development.  He maintained a studio in the Cortez Hotel and painted often at his sister's ranch.  His stage-scenery design for Bowie High School in El Paso was executed with Edwin F. Jones as a Public Works of Art project during the Great Depression.  Crews died in an El Paso hospital and was buried in the city.
     Exhibitions:  Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York (1921); Woman's Club, El Paso (1927, 1935, 1941);  Annual Texas Artists Exhibition, Fort Worth (1927, 1929-30, 1932, 1934-1936); Edgar B. Davis Competition, San Antonio (1927-29); Texas Federation of Women's Clubs, Denver (1930); Early El Paso Artist, El Paso Centennial Museum (1981); Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio (one-man).
     Murals:  St. Regis Hotel and YMCA, El Paso; Officer's Club, Pecos (Texas) Army Air Fields; Mission Theater, Messilla Park, New Mexico.
     Collections: Bowie High School, El Paso; Hilton Hotel, El Paso.
     Affiliations:  El Paso Art Guild; Far Southwest Artist Association, El Paso.