Celebrate the work of this Texas cowboy, western artist and poet, one of our
Texas artists featured in our online art gallery.
A short biography: William Wallace Simpson was only twelve years old when he moved with his family in 1892 to Childress, Texas. They bought land there which became known as the LS Ranch. After graduating from Childress High School, Wallace worked on numerous ranches in the area, including the Matador Ranch, OX Ranch, 3-Bar Ranch and the Buckle L Ranch. By day he worked these ranches and tracked down horse and cattle thieves. By night he began to draw pictures of country life or animals. While working the Buckle L Ranch near Childress one summer he met his wife to be: Effie Fields of Decatur, Texas. He was asked to pick her up by buckboard from the train station to visit her relatives who owned the Buckle L Ranch, N.B. Fields.
He moved with his wife to Fort Worth and worked at the Fort Worth Livestock Exchange (nicknamed "the Wall Street of the West"), weighing, selling and delivering cattle by train to buyer destinations. He also designed stationery for Davis & Hamm Livestock Commission Company. His first full time employment as an artist was with Peerless Press in Oklahoma City for $ 3.00 per week. Moving to El Paso sometime around 1914, he became an artist for the El Paso Times. Around 1920, Wallace became Cowboy Artist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. For ten years in Fort Worth he created numerous sketches and oil paintings on both a commission basis and to support many newspaper articles. In 1930, Wallace moved to the Dallas Morning News, serving the dual role of writer and artist.
He moved to Sapulpa, Oklahoma in about 1936, and lived on land his parents had originally bought from Chief Billy Sapulpa while it was still indian territory. He became Director of the Sapulpa Art Gallery and held that position until around 1942. Before moving back to Fort Worth in 1952, he spent his later years as an artist for Liberty Glass Mills in Sapulpa. Wallace Simpson passed away on December 17, 1956. Some copies of his artwork are on display at the
Childress County Heritage Museum and the North Fort Worth
Stockyards Museum.
These open edition giclee on canvas prints from our online
Texas art gallery capture some of the flavor of Texas ranch cowboy life not just imagined but actually experienced by Wallace. For more information on this Texas artist and his Texas ranch artwork, click on any picture below:
