With Bold Strokes: Boyer Gonzales: Boyer Gonzales, 1864-1934 / Edward Simmen.

The earth, sea, and clouds graced this watercolorist’s canvas, and with each bold stroke Boyer Gonzales captured his subjects in his own distinctive style. An innovative painter specializing in land- and seascapes, Gonzales was heavily influenced by the work and friendship of Winslow Homer. From this relationship, Gonzales forged new pathways in art by using color to create rather than to imitate.

Throughout his life, Gonzales drew and painted scenes around him–from the South Texas coastline to Mexico. In 1895 he pioneered the route of American painters in Mexico, where he found scenes he would return to time and again. He truly entered the art scene, though, in 1916 when his watercolor In a Texas Swamp was included in an annual exhibition sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago and was further honored by being selected for an extended tour of museums in cities throughout the United States.

Gonzales soon became well-known in the art world, as he was accepted as a member of the Salmagundi Club and the New York Water Color Society. He moved to the artist’s colony of Woodstock and interacted with other artists including Jose Arpa y Perea, Robert and Julian Onderdonk, and Frank Reaugh. Working in the school of American impressionism, he created works recognizable as his own.

Along with fifty of Gonzales’s works, author Edward Simmen includes the artist’s life story, drawing his information primarily from the Gonzales Family Papers at the Rosenberg Library (comprising diaries, scrapbooks, sketch pads, letters, drawings and sketches, clippings and family photographs).

Admirers of Gonzales’s work, as well as those interested in early-twentieth-century American impressionism, will find this a beautiful examination of his life and career.