Link to the Time Record News article about JoAnn's book by Richard Carter:
http://www.timesrecordnews.com/news/2010/apr/04/crites-writes-the-story-of-oil-boom-artist/
When JoAnn Jenne Crites met painter Emil Hermann in 1957 at a Hungarian relief fundraiser, she was 23 and he was 87.
“He still thought of himself as a lady’s man,” Crites laughed, “though it didn’t surprise me because he was a European who also was an artist.”
Despite being familiar with his best-known painting locally — the 70-foot Alma Mater mural over the stage at Wichita Falls High School (1924-25) — she doesn’t remember asking him “one intelligent question about his life or art.
“Had I known I was going to write his biography, I would have asked him a million questions.”
Crites began researching and writing the painter’s biography 11 years ago. Her book release party for “Emil Hermann His Life and Art” will be at the Museum of North Texas History from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. April 11.
Hermann was a landscape and portrait painter born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in June 1869. He moved to Wichita Falls in 1919 and split time between here and studios in Dayton, Ohio, and New York City before settling in Wichita Falls permanently in 1932 until his death in April 1966.
Hermann moved to America in 1892 and also had studios in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Tulsa. He probably created more than 2,000 paintings, and 1,000 or more are likely floating around the country, Crites said.
“Little is known about his life in Hungary,” she said. “He had been in Tulsa and was following the new oil money doing portraits of the oil barons. He came to Wichita Falls and Burkburnett because of the oil boom. People paid big money for portraits then,” she said,
Most of his work was commissioned. “Some of his early portraits are beautiful, but I feel his landscapes are much better.”
Shortly after Crites met Hermann in 1957, she married her geologist husband, Bill, in 1958 and soon after began a 32-year trek that went through West Texas, California, the Middle East and Africa before the couple returned here in 1990.
Crites began volunteering at the Wichita County Archives in 1992 and still volunteers at the North Texas History Museum four days a week.
While working on the massive Louise Kelly collection of 50 years of articles on Wichita County, Crites found articles on Hermann. Her aunt, who knew the artist, gave her a Hermann landscape from the 1920s, which further developed her interest in the painter and collecting his work. Crites now owns 17 of his paintings.
She worked on the Kelly collection for nine years until she discovered a column by Glenn Shelton that mentioned a box of Hermann letters. That reference led Crites on a quest that ended in a law firm’s warehouse in Dallas.
Once she found the images in the box and newspaper clippings from around the country, she decided to write a book on Hermann.
“I thought people needed to see his work and the information that Hermann had not told people or had hidden.”
She traveled to the cities where Hermann had lived and then began filling in the huge biographical holes and documenting his paintings as best she could.
“He was a news prima donna,” she laughed, “and there are hundreds of stories I probably overlooked.
“I never thought it would take that long to research and write.” Last year, she met Elizabeth Bourland Hawley, an area photographer and editor, who helped Crites get the biography published.
Crites was born in Friberg-Cooper community north of Wichita Falls.
She and her husband have two daughters, Kathleen and Cynthia, who are married and live in England.
Growing up, she studied ballet with Frank and Irina Pal. She also studied piano, French and German when she and her husband lived overseas.
The Museum of North Texas History will have copies of the book that contains more than 100 pictures of the artist, his family and his art. Books will be sold for $33. The public is welcome to the opening at the museum.
“I am hoping more people will want to send images of his work once they have read the book. Many folks have inherited his paintings and may not even know.” Written by Richard Carter for the Times Record News.
