G. Harvey

Gerald Harvey Jones was born in San Antonio in 1933 and grew up on his grandfather's stories of the Texas frontier — imagery that would shape his life's work. He graduated from the University of North Texas in 1956 and taught industrial arts in Austin before committing fully to painting in 1963, by which time he had shortened his signature to "G. Harvey." Recognition came quickly. His 1965 appearance at the Grand National exhibition in New York earned him the American Artists' Professional League's New Master's Award. Drawing on the techniques of French boulevard painters such as Eugène Galien-Laloue, Harvey became the first American artist to bring their glowing, gas-lit atmosphere to Western art, pairing frontier subjects with evocative turn-of-the-century streetscapes. His collectors included President Lyndon B. Johnson and Texas Governor John Connally, and his work was exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution and other Washington institutions. In November 2018, a G. Harvey original set an auction record of $516,500. He painted for more than fifty years, working from Fredericksburg in his later decades until his death in 2017. His paintings remain cornerstones of serious Texas and Western art collections.