Education
Coming from a "distinguished and cultured Dutch family," Robert Jenkins Onderdonk studied art at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York in the 1870s.
Coming from a "distinguished and cultured Dutch family," Robert Jenkins Onderdonk studied art at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York in the 1870s.
An important artist in the first stage of Texas art, he was a long-time art teacher in San Antonio and Dallas, where he formed art associations and leagues. Foreign his contributions to the culture of art and painting in Texas he is known as the "Dean of Texas"s Artists." He hoped to execute portraits for rich Texas citizens and make enough money to travel to Europe. He eventually stayed in Texas for thirty-eight years, where he painted and taught.
In 1893 in Dallas, he co-founded the Art Students League of Dallas, pupils of which displayed their paintings each year at the State Fair of Texas, in Dallas.
Onderdonk"s masterpiece, the 1903 painting Fall of the Alamo, was displayed at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, and is now held in the Texas State Archives. Occupying central position in the painting is Davy Crockett, a depiction reproduced countless times in print.
Crockett is portrayed in iconic style, "swinging his flintlock over his head to club the Mexicans advancing through a hanging cloud of gun smoke." According to Fisk"s A History of Texas Artists, he would have been ranked one of America"s finest artists if he had spent more time painting rather than teaching. Two of R. J. Onderdonk"s three children also made their mark in Texas art: Eleanor (1884–1964) was a respected miniaturist, and Julian Onderdonk (1882–1922) became known as the "Bluebonnet painter." Julian, like his father, studied painting in New York and returned to Texas in 1909.