The Cornish Portrait Bust, 1931

 

In the fall of 1931, Tennant received a commission to make a memorial portrait bust from Mrs. Hilda Cornish of Little Rock, Arkansas. Mrs. Cornish was the widow of a prominent banker, Ed Cornish, who had been President of the American Bank of Commerce, the largest financial institution in Arkansas. Mr. Cornish had been a respected member of the community. He and his wife lived in one of the most palatial homes in Little Rock. Sadly, Cornish had suffered financial losses in the fall of 1928 and taken his life while staying in a New Orleans hotel, an action no doubt caused by despondency over his business situation. Nevertheless, Mrs. Cornish had inherited a considerable estate and it was her desire to place a bust of her late husband at his gravesite in the Oakland Cemetery at Little Rock. Accordingly, she traveled to Dallas and engaged Allie for the task. Tennant did her preliminary research on Mr. Cornish and completed her clay model at her Live Oak Street studio. After a few months, the bust was ready to be shipped to the foundry where it was cast in bronze. In the late spring of 1931, Tennant traveled to Little Rock where she supervised its placement in the cemetery. It was an interesting piece because it had a golden bronze patina and was set on a pink marble pedestal. In a later era, this gravesite became well-known in Arkansas, and not for the portrait bust. After her husband’s death Mrs. Cornish subsequently had a very public career in advocating birth control in the South, thus earning a title as the “Mother of Birth Control in Arkansas.” She died in 1965 and is today also buried in the plot which is marked by Tennant’s portrait bust.

 

 



Howard W. Odum, a 1930s Voice for Regionalism

Sociologist Howard W. Odum of the University of North Carolina

Dallas Regionalist artists including Allie Tennant found satisfaction in the work of  sociologist Howard Odum. He is today considered one of the most significant intellectuals associated during the 1930s with Regionalism. In 1938, Odum of the University of North Carolina and Harry S. Moore of University of Texas at Austin, published a seminal volume entitled American Regionalism that defined the parameters of this viewpoint and articulated its intellectual credo. Odum and Moore noted that "Regionalism is in reality the opposite of its most common interpretation, namely, localism, sectionalism, or provincialism." They observed that "Regionalism connotes unity in a total national composition, while sectionalism with its separatism is inherently different." Dallas artist Jerry Bywaters echoed this observation when he wrote about Regionalism by saying “the truth is that artists found nationalism before the politicians."

To learn more about Odum, see the webpage of the Howard W. Odum Institute at the University of North Carolina. Click Here
 

Who Were the Regional Artists?

The Regionalists were a varied group of Texas artists who lived mostly in the Dallas area during the late 1920s and 1930s, although some lived much farther away including Tom Lea from El Paso. Some of these artists from Tennant’s circle were branded with a term that subsequently came into widespread, popular usage to denote the entire Regional movement: the “Dallas Nine.” This originated with a 1932 showing of Regional paintings at the Dallas Public Art Gallery. The exhibit highlighted the work of nine Dallas artists, all men and all easel painters, each of whom was a self-described Regionalist. The artists in this show were Jerry Bywaters, John Douglass, Buck Winn, Otis Dozier, Lloyd Goff, Perry Nichols, William Lester, Everett Spruce, and Charles L. McCann. "The Dallas Nine” constituted, as art historian Rick Stewart explained decades later, “a larger group of painters” who embraced the Regionalist viewpoint. Some women in fact belonged to the community of Dallas artists comprising this school of expression. Florence McClung, Dorothy Austin, Coreen Mary Spellman and several of her colleagues in the Art Department of the female college at Denton; Stella L. LaMond at East Texas State Teacher’s College and then S.M.U.; Blanche McVeigh and Evaline Sellors -- all lived and worked in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area of North Texas during the 1930s. Significant among these women, of course, was Allie Tennant, who emerged as the most prominent female Regionalist artist in Dallas and who was likely the best-known of them to the general public.

Many of the artists pictured in this 1931 image were Regionalists, including
Allie Tennant who is number 14

 

Read about the Dallas Nine in the Handbook of Texas. ClickHere

SMU Central Libraires Digital Archives of Texas Art

The Central Libraries of Southern Methodist University maintains an online archive of images relating to early Texas art. This is a cooperative venture with the Bywaters Collection of the Hamon Arts Library at SMU, the Meadows Museum of SMU, the Dallas Public Library, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin -- all of whom have contributed high quality images. It is possible to search by several parameters including the name of the artists. There are three distinct online collections at this site which pertain to early Texas art.

Texas Artists: Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper

Octavio Medellin: Works of Art and Artistic Processes

Otis Dozier Sketchbooks

The Bywaters Collection of the Hamon Arts Library at SMU

Sam Ratcliffe, Director, and Ellen Niewyk, Curator, at the
Bywaters Collection of SMU

Allie Tennant left no personal papers. It was therefore necessary to research her life for this book in the files of the organizations to which she belonged, from the public record, and in the papers of the people with whom she corresponded. Research for this volume relied significantly on the important holdings of the Jerry Bywaters Collection of the Hamon Arts Library at SMU. There, Sam DeShong Ratcliffe, Director, and Ellen Buie Niewyk, Curator, provided me with full access to their collections, affording me immeasurable assistance during every phase of my research. I am also indebted to Emily Grubbs George at the collection for bringing to my attention items that I otherwise would not have known about. The archival collections at the Bywaters constitutes an incomparable source for the study of Texas art. Jerry Bywaters, whose papers compose the foundation of its holdings, was a well-organized person of great historical awareness who saved all manner of papers, records, and written materials dealing with Texas art for much of the twentieth century. The comprehensive and computerized indexes to these items made it possible to use this archival collection very efficiently. The ease of access permitted by these computerized finding aids saving me many days of page-turning, instead providing quick and easy access to relevant documents in ways heretofore impossible before the existence of digitized finding aids.

Click Here for the website of the Bywaters Collection at SMU

Light Cummins Speaks at Re-Dedication of Tennant's Bonham Scultpure

Light Cummins at the Re-Dedication of the restored
Allie Tennant sculpture of James Butler Bonham

Allie Tennant Loved Cars



Allie Tennant at the wheel of the 1934 Bentley Drop Head Coupe, circa 1965

 

At various times in the 1950s and 1960s, Allie’s nephew Herbert Tennant, Jr. lived with her at her home on Live Oak Street in Dallas. He enjoyed restoring classic Rolls Royce and Bentley automobiles as a pastime, so the driveway was sometimes clogged with auto parts and equipment. Allie enjoyed driving these distinctive cars around Dallas, especially a rare 1934 Bentley drop-head coupé that proved a special favorite of hers. For everyday use, however, she was also accustomed to owning a late model Cadillac sedan she traded every few years for a new one at the Lone Star Motors on Ross Avenue.