Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the Union in December 1845. Artist Jenne Magafan waltzed right into trouble when she tried to recreate that "good old western style" for the Anson, Texas, post office.
Texas Admission Day
Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the Union in December 1845. Artist Jenne Magafan waltzed right into trouble when she tried to recreate that "good old western style" for the Anson, Texas, post office.
Magafan had completed several commissions … when she was asked in 1939 to present designs for the Anson, Texas, post office. She visited Anson and learned of the annual cowboy dance, a celebration in which "people rig themselves up in the costumes of their grandparents and have a ball in the good old western style."
She submitted a pencil sketch for Cowboy Dance, which received approval, and set to work on the color sketch that would more fully indicate her plans for the mural. She received many suggestions for improving the composition.…
Magafan made the corrections, proceeded with full-size cartoons, and, on receiving further approval, painted the mural. She added a jug in the lower right corner (absent from her study) to signal the festive mood.
Anticipating an enthusiastic public reception, Magafan … was aghast at the local newspaper's reaction: "throughout the history of Anson there has never been an open saloon nor did [Magafan] know that the people of Anson continue to vote against liquor stores." Had the artist known this, perhaps she would have omitted the obnoxious liquor jug.
Source: National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996).
Pictured: Jenne Magafan, 1916–52, Cowboy Dance (mural study, Anson, Texas, Post Office), 1941, oil, 23 7/8 x 30 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Internal Revenue Service through General Services Administration.