Frank Mechau

Frank Albert Mechau Jr. (1904–1946), was born in Wakeeney, Kansas and spent most of his short life in Colorado. He was a realistic painter who romanticized the American West and is a key figure of the Western genre.

Education

Mechau was raised in Colorado and attended Denver University and the Art Institute of Chicago. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1934. His work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.^[1] He was a cowboy for the railroad and a prize fighter. Ethel Magafan, a noted muralist, was a student.

Marriage

Frank and his wife, Pauline, met in a New York bookstore and financed a trip to Europe by selling their book collection. Pauline (a Colorado conservationist) formulated her family into a children's folk-singing group to support themselves after Frank’s untimely death in December 1946. She died at the age of 98 in November 2005.^[2]

Murals

In 1938, artist Mechau was commissioned under the Public Works Administration's art programs to paint three oil-on-canvas panels on the fourth-floor of the Eldon B. Mahon United States Courthouse building located in Fort Worth, Texas.^[3] Mechau's oil-on-canvas paintings, The Taking of Sam Bass, Two Texas Rangers, and Flags Over Texas were the only New Deal art commission sponsored in Fort Worth. The courthouse, built in 1933, serves the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. His work also includes the oil on canvas mural titled Long Horns in the Ogallala, Nebraska post office, commissioned by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, and completed in 1938. Mechau painted another mural in 1940 titled Ranchers of the Panhandle Fighting Prairie Fire with Skinned Steer commissioned for the post office in Brownfield, Texas. The building serves as the Brownfield Police Station.^[4]

Remembrance

A historical marker has been placed in front of the Brownville post office with text reading:
Fighting A Prairie Fire" by Frank Mechau. Mechau, a resident of Colorado, was selected by the WPA to paint a mural for the Brownfield Post Office which he completed in October 1940. The work of Frank Mechau stands as a magnificent documentation of The West. The promising young artist died in 1946.

According to the artist, "The prairie fire was a demon of the Panhandle. Sixty square miles of range could be destroyed in a day's time. Once the flame began to spread there were few efficient ways to combat it. Plowing a line was too slow, backfiring too dangerous. Cowboys would fight the fire with wet sacks or kill a steer and partly skin it leaving the wet skin to drag behind in an effort to rub out the edge of the fire." (Terry County Historical Commission).^[5]

References