On view September through December 2026 at The Citadelle Art Museum

Before there were highways or galleries out here, there were women with brushes.

The West in Her Hands: Early Women Artists of West Texas brings together 42 works by 29 women who painted, printed, and sculpted West Texas across generations. This collection of pioneer women artists, on loan from the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, captures a region these artists knew firsthand: Palo Duro Canyon, working ranches, windmills, wildflowers, small churches, distant mountains, and the wide stretches of country between them.

Their work did more than record the West. These women helped create its early cultural life.

At the Edge of the Art World

For the earliest women artists of West Texas, distance shaped everything.

Roads were few. Travel was difficult. Art schools, museums, and major exhibitions were hundreds of miles away. Many learned first from the books, reproductions, and artwork they could bring with them.

As railroads connected West Texas to the rest of the country, some traveled to Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia to study. They returned with new techniques and ideas, taught students in their own communities, and helped organize local art associations and exhibitions across the region.

They became artists, teachers, organizers, and keepers of a cultural tradition that was still taking shape.

See West Texas Through Their Eyes

The exhibition moves across decades, places, and styles.

Anna Keener painted Untitled [Saddleback Mountain] in 1926. Isabel Robinson captured cattle, a barn, and a windmill in watercolor in 1927. Margaret Seewald etched Prairie Flowers in 1937. Juanita Tittle Pollard painted the spring mesquite country around Abilene. La Wanda Murfee turned her attention to a small Episcopal church in Fort Stockton. Olive Vandruff painted the familiar bluebonnets of Texas.

Together, these works offer something larger than a collection of landscapes and still lifes. They show how women saw this country before much of its visual history had been recorded.

The exhibition also includes work by artists such as Elizabeth Baker, Elizabeth Keefer Boatwright, Bess Bigham Hubbard, Polly Hoffman, Helen King Kendall, Jessie Palmer, Alice Welty Nichols, Ora Thompson Newlin, Evaline Sellors, Fern Thurston and many others.

Women Who Created a Place for Art

By the early 1920s, women artists were organizing art associations and exhibitions in communities stretching from Dalhart and Amarillo to Lubbock, Abilene, San Angelo, Alpine and El Paso.

Recognition came slowly.

In 1923, San Angelo artist Mollie Crowther became the first West Texas woman accepted into the annual Texas artists exhibition in Fort Worth. By the 1936 Texas Centennial exhibition in Dallas, works by West Texas women including Floy Hooper, Bess Bigham Hubbard and Isabel Robinson had been selected for exhibition.

By 1939, artists including Troy Allen, Elizabeth Keefer, Polly Hoffman, Helen King Kendall, Isabel Robinson, Juanita Tittle and Vera Wise had established themselves as professional artists.

Their paintings, prints, and sculpture preserved the landscapes and lives around them while helping West Texas develop an artistic identity of its own.

Exhibition artwork courtesy of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.

Plan your visit to The Citadelle Art Museum and experience The West in Her Hands, now on view in Canadian, Texas.

We’re open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am – 4 pm.