East Wall, San Antonio, Post Office Lobby Frescos, 1937 (Design Rejected), gouache on paper, 7 x 20 1/2, signed: Howard Cook

In 1936, Howard Cook won a nationwide competition held by the Public Works of Art Project for the mural commission for the new San Antonio Post Office being built across from the Alamo. Cook was paid $12,000 ($217,000 in today's dollars) for the commission which he began in 1937 and took two years to complete. The 16-panel mural is entitled "San Antonio's Importance in Texas History" and it depicts, scenes ranging from the Spanish conquistadors to the arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Technically, the panels are frescoes and, at the time of completion, were the largest in North America. This study, done in 1937, is a proposed rendering of the east wall. Cook used South Texas cowboys and locals as models for his subjects. Of the three cowboys in the left foreground, one was the author J. Frank Dobie, and another was the last living cowboy from the first Chisholm Trail cattle drive in 1867.  The goats in the right foreground were moved to another panel and the two prominent goats became the subject of Cook's award-winning 1937 lithograph "Nanny and Kid".