John Douglass (1905-1969)

Dallas, Landscape painter, muralist, frame maker, graphic artist, gallery owner. Born in Bennington, Oklahoma, Douglass moved with his family to Wichita Falls in 1914, then to Dallas where he studied with Frank Reaugh and traveled with him on several summer sketching caravans during the 1920s and 1930s, including a 1926 trip to the Davis Mountains and the Big Bend area. Afterward Douglass studied and worked six years in Santa Fe and Taos before enrolling in the Art Students League of New York, where he was a student of Thomas Hart Benton and Boardman Robinson. Douglass returned to Dallas and worked as a crew member assisting in the execution of murals and sculptural works on buildings erected at Fair Park, Dallas, for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. In 1940 he established an art gallery in addition to his frame shop to show and sell the works of local artists; he provided custom-made frames, often of his own design. For seven years he was assistant director of art exhibitions at the Texas State Fair. Douglass died in a Dallas hospital and was buried in Aurora Cemetery, Wise County. His wife was Kathryn Ruth Helm Nobles. Exhibitions: Annual Texas Artists Exhibition, Fort Worth (1927, 1933); Annual Allied Arts Exhibition, Dallas (1930, 1931 award, 1932,1933 prize 1935, 1937); Nine Young Dallas Artists, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (1932); Annual Exhibition of the State Fair of Texas, Dallas (1934); Dallas Painters in Oils, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (1935); Thirteen Dallas Artists, Harry Z. Lawrence Galleries, Dallas (1936); Greater Texas Centennial Exposition, Dallas (1936); Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition, Dallas (1937); Lone Star Printmakers Circuit Exhibition (1938-41); Annual Texas Print Exhibition, Dallas (1943); Lone Star regionalism, The Dallas Nine and Their Circle, Dallas Museum of art (1985 TRAVELING EXHIBITION); Hock Shop Collection; Rediscovering Texas Artists of the past, Center for the visual arts, Denton (1998) Painting in Dallas 1889-1945, McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas (1999). Murals: Dallas County Criminal Courts Building (two); Assisted on mural in Texas Centennial Building, Fair Park Dallas; North Dallas High School. Affiliations: Dallas Artists League; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; Dallas Print Society; Lone Star Printmakers.