Attributed to Eleanor Onderdonk (Amer., 1884-1964), "Late Summer", oil on canvas board, not signed, inscribed on the verso "Late Summer" and "Late Summer in Texas #5"

sight: 7 x 11 in., frame: 9 x 12.5 in.

Provenance: Property from a home in San Antonio, Texas; originally purchased from an estate that contained several Eleanor Onderdonk paintings; attributed by leading Onderdonk expert

Eleanor Rogers Onderdonk was a versatile Texas artist, educator, and administrator who worked in portraiture, landscape, miniature painting, and sculpture. Born in San Antonio into the prominent Onderdonk art family, she was the daughter of painter Robert Jenkins Onderdonk and sister of landscape painter Robert Julian Onderdonk. She received formal training at the Art Students League of New York and the John F. Carlson School of Landscape Painting in Woodstock, New York, studying with notable artists and teachers including George Brandt Bridgman, Frank Vincent DuMond, John Fabian Carlson, Alice Beckington, John Christian Johansen, Lucia Fairchild Fuller, and Helen Savier DuMond. Her broad training informed an equally diverse practice, encompassing landscape, portraiture, miniatures, and sculpture, while her career also included teaching at St. Mary’s Hall and the Bon Avon School in San Antonio and serving as curator of art at the Witte Memorial Museum. Onderdonk exhibited widely, including with the San Antonio Art League, Southern States Art League Annual Exhibition, Women Artists of Texas, the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters. Her contributions to the arts were recognized with her selection as San Antonio’s Woman of the Year in Art in 1955 and, in 1962, as the “Texan Who Contributes the Most to Art” at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas; the Witte Memorial Museum later honored her legacy by naming a gallery after her.