
Merritt Thomas
Mauzey (1897-1973)
Born in Clifton, Texas, Mauzey was
raised on a cotton farm in Oak Creek Valley, Nolan County, where he absorbed firsthand the
planting, nurturing, and harvesting of that important southern crop. He was married in
1918 and two years later acquired his own cotton farm. Unfortunately, it did not prove to
be a success, and Mauzey was forced to sell his land and move to Sweetwater, where he
worked as a clerk for a cotton company.
In 1927 he moved with his family
to Dallas and took a position with J. Kahn and Company, a cotton exporter. At the same
time he rekindled an old interest in art and began formal study with Frank Klepper at the
Dallas Art Institute. His artistic debut was the exhibition of two works at the Texas
Centennial. In the same period, he began a series of works based on his knowledge of the
cotton industry.
Mauzey was one of the charter
members of the Lone Star Printmakers, and by 1940 he had become one of the first artists
in the area to own a lithographic press, teaching himself printing. Shortly after this he
taught lithography at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and began exhibiting much more
widely, winning several awards. Carl Zigrosser, one of the most well-known historians of
American printmaking, became an early admirer of Mauzey's work and encouraged his
advancement.
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In 1946 Mauzey was awarded a
Guggenheim fellowship, the first Texas artist to be so honored. He used it to create a
series of lithographs about Texas, which he executed with the cooperation of master
printers Lawrence Barrett in Colorado Springs and George Miller in Woodstock and New York.
In 1955 he wrote and illustrated two books for children, Cotton Farm Boy and Texas Ranch
Boy. Two years later, he created Oilfield Boy as a continuation of the series, and three
more books followed, gaining the artist wide recognition. After his retirement in 1962,
Mauzey became an active supporter of the Museum of the Southwest in Midland, which
possesses a large collection of his work.
Source:
Lone Star Regionalism:
The Dallas Nine and Their Circle, 1928 - 1945 by Rick Stewart, Texas Monthly Press and
the Dallas Museum of Art, 1985, pp. 177 & 178.
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