Bill Bomar: Life and Artistic Legacy (1919–1991)

William Purinton “Bill” Bomar, Jr., artist, son of William Purinton and Jewel Ruth (Nail) Bomar, was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on December 30, 1919. Bomar came from a wealthy family. His father was a civic leader and president of the flour milling firm Bewley Mills, and his mother was a member of a prominent Texas ranching family. At a very young age Bomar was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, which for the rest of his life impaired his mobility, speech, and coordination. He began painting at the age of seven after showing a talent for drawing with his left hand. Bomar’s family brought him into early contact with art collector Anne Burnett Windfohr and artist Murray Bewley. His parents’ affluence afforded Bomar the opportunity to study with several noted artists. His first teacher, landscape artist Sallie Blythe Mummert, instructed him in oil painting, which was his primary medium early in his artistic career. He studied watercolor under landscape artist Jozef Bakos in Santa Fe. From 1940 to 1941 Bomar studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He then studied with painters John Sloan, Amédée Ozenfant, and Hans Hoffman.

Fort Worth Circle and New York

During the 1940s Bomar’s art was frequently shown in the annual Texas General Exhibition (he won the top purchase prize in 1947) and the Fort Worth Art Association’s annual Local Artists Show. In 1944 Bomar won first prize from the Fort Worth Art Association for his painting, The Cat in Portia’s Garden. This and other selected works from the show then went on a circuit tour throughout the Southwest. In September and October of that year, Bomar and four of the other artists represented in the tour—Dickson Reeder, Flora Blanc Reeder, Bror Utter, and Veronica Helfensteller, together with Donald Vogel, were presented at the Weyhe Gallery in New York. The exhibition, Six Texas Painters, was a significant milestone in Bomar’s career. The five Fort Worth painters, together with several other Fort Worth artists, formed a loose collective known as the Fort Worth Circle, most active from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. This group embraced modernism over regionalism and was a driving force behind Fort Worth’s post-war cultural and artistic community.

Bomar actively pursued exhibitions for his art. His work was shown at such prestigious institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art and in multiple solo shows at the Weyhe Gallery. He also expanded into the mediums of printmaking and collage. In the 1950s and 1960s Bomar divided his time between New York, where he had a studio in the Chelsea Hotel, and New Mexico, where he purchased a home in 1968. In New York he maintained close connections with fellow Fort Worth Circle artist Marjorie Johnson Lee.

Old Jail Art Center and New Mexico

In 1972 Bomar permanently relocated to Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, where he continued his artistic output. He was a longtime member of the Taos Art Association. Along with his cousin Reilly Nail, an art promoter and television producer, Bomar cofounded the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas, where his mother’s side of the family lived. The museum’s initial collection was donated by Bomar, Nail, and their mothers. In 1986 the museum hosted Beyond Regionalism, the first broad survey of the Fort Worth Circle and its members.

Despite his physical disability, Bomar pushed himself to remain productive until the end of his life. He also remained open to experimentation and could not be pinned down to one particular art style, genre, or medium. At the age of seventy-one, Bill Bomar died of a heart attack on November 26, 1991, at his home in Ranchos de Taos. His remains were returned to Fort Worth and buried at Greenwood Memorial Park. In the years since his death, retrospective exhibitions of Bomar’s works have been organized at the Old Jail Art Center. His artwork forms part of many private collections as well as the permanent collections of such institutions as the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Old Jail Art Center; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York; and the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos.