Fort Worth Then

"Rare images of Fort Worth, Texas in the 1920s and 1930s abound in the art of Samuel P. Ziegler (1882-1967). Standing apart from his local contemporaries, Ziegler regarded Fort Worth's rapid urban development as an indispensable source of ideas. He expressed these ideas in paintings, drawings, etchings and lithographs of significant buildings, street scenes, demolition sites, construction sites, the Texas Christian University campus, where he taught music and art, and the Trinity River. In the late 1920s, his artistic output grew to include depictions of oil production efforts in counties west of Fort Worth. In this publication, many representative examples of Ziegler's work from this period are presented for the first time. Taken as a whole, these little-known works of art capture a sense of the metamorphosis that the City of Fort Worth experienced in the first half of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of a Texas Christian University art professor who never had to look far to find inspiration. Because of his ability to absorb the sights of the city and the oil boom spectacle unfolding on Fort Worth's doorstep, and turn these sights into art, Samuel P. Ziegler embodied the mindset of all Texas artists living in the Depression era who believed in and pursued the regionalist ideal"--