Juan Menchaca (1910-1999), "Goodnight-Loving Trail", Portrait of Oliver Loving, oil on canvas, 18 x 24", frame: 23 x 29"

Provenance: A West Hollywood, California collection

Juan Menchaca was born in raised in Fort Worth, Texas, and attended the Texas School of Fine Arts. He continued his studies in Denver, Colorado, under the portrait painter Robert Graham. In 1936, he found a job through the Works Progress Administration painting portraits of figures from Colorado history for the State Museum in Denver, and soon became part of the team of artists painting backgrounds and producing three-dimension figures and other elements for the museum"™s dioramas. During World War II, he applied his skills to illustrating manuals and making models used for military training. In the 1950s, he returned to creating museum dioramas on Western history, and was still working in that field in 1964, when he was interviewed for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art"™s New Deal and the Arts oral history project.