A Cloudy Day, Bluebonnets near San Antonio, Texas

Born in San Antonio to a family of painters, Julian Onderdonk moved to New York in 1901 to study at the Art Students League. He spent that summer with William Merritt Chase at his school in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, where he developed a facility for outdoor landscape painting. In 1909 Onderdonk moved back to San Antonio, where he continued to produce landscapes in the open air. In paintings such as this one, Onderdonk conveyed the uniqueness of the Texas landscape with its vast, expansive vistas and celebrated bluebonnets blanketing the hillsides.