Texas Pictures

To see our full collection of
Texas Photography:

On December 29, 1845, President Polk signed legislation to annex Texas as the 28th united state. By spring of the following year, shots had been fired and war declared over the contested border region between the US and Mexico. The Mexican government claimed the borderline ran along the Nueces River on the basis of Spanish land grants from the 1700s. US officials claimed the border ran along the Rio Grande, based on their military strength. Texas has been contested ground since Europeans first laid eyes on its sandy beaches. The French wanted to take Texas from the indigenous peoples, the Spanish wanted it from the French, the Mexicans wanted it from the Spanish, and the Anglo-American settlers wanted it from Mexico. Today, there are still some who argue that Texas should still be its own nation. But why? What about Texas has been and still is so evocative?

Texas is more than a place, more than the stretch of land that lies between the Rio Grande and Red River. Texas is a feeling, a manifestation of that essential human need for elbowroom. Texas spans from the Gulf of Mexico to the Rocky Mountains, from Mexico to the Great Plains. The landscape of Texas, ranging from arid desert, to coniferous forest, to tropical coastline, to swamp, to snow-capped mountain, is as scintillating and diverse as the people inhabiting that landscape. There is something nostalgic, something atavistic, that endears people to this state. Regardless of where they come from, when people come to Texas, it feels like home.

That nostalgia, that feeling, is evidenced in the photography of Texas that we offer. In the picture, Low Red Barn and Wheat, you can see the expanse of blue sky across the horizon line and the slow drift of cloud shadows across the golden wind whipped grain. A red barn and cluster of trees split the broad fields of gold and blue in the picture with an intriguing solitude, a feeling of experiencing in privacy the wonder of nature, yet with the familiar proximity of home. The very essence of all that is Texas is invoked in the picture Blue Bonnets and Red Rock, by Texas photographer Bob Lilly. The red rock anchors the background with a rugged core of stability while the vibrant yet delicate beauty of the Blue Bonnet pierces the center of the photograph. All this is enveloped by lush, verdant undergrowth. This image is indicative of the exotic mystique that undercurrents the terrain of Texas.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful Texas pictures we offer is Texas Wildflowers and Mesquite, also by Bob Lilly. The mesquite tree bursts from the red-blue sea of Indian Paintbrushes and Blue Bonnets, reaching, frenzied, toward the nearly cloudless canopy of blue. The breathtaking, knee-weakening beauty of this picture is too enamoring to resist, as is Texas itself.


James Webb©2005