The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 106, July 2002 - April, 2003 Page: 345

Book Reviews

motion of spas and the special features which attracted their clientele, describes
daily activities at several of the major Texas resorts, and provides capsule ac-
counts of individual locations such as the planned community at Wootan Wells.
Colorful descriptions of earlier visitors include their reactions to the buoyance
and smells of mineral waters, many of which emit sulphurous odors. With regret,
the author remarks that none of the bath houses of Texas have been restored
nor saved from destruction. The last chapter attempts to explain the demise of
these "places lost." Several factors including natural disasters, government regu-
lations covering health and hygiene, and the impact of war and depression are
mentioned. But changing lifestyles, including the development of far more com-
plex tourist sites with a host of amenities including sports, theatres, and shop-
ping malls, is a theme which is not adequately developed. Also neglected is the
topic of the "mineral water humbug" (Good Housekeeping [1914], p. 107), a de-
scription used by Dr. Harvey Wiley, a leader in the enactment of pure food and
drug legislation. The role of natural springs in supplying drinking water is a
timely issue deserving greater attention in light of the popularity of such prod-
ucts today.
More a historical gazetteer than an analysis of this unique chapter in the histo-
ry of tourism, the book's appendices include a list by county and capsule descrip-
tions of all the medicinal waters of Texas. This concluding fifty-six-page
"regional guide" makes the book desirable for travelers who may share the au-
thor's passion for the springs, spas, and fountains of youth that dot the Texas
landscape.
University of Southern Indiana Robert L. Reid
Texas Paznters, Sculptors, and Graphzc Artists: A Bzographzcal Dictionary of Artists in
Texas before I942. By John and Deborah Powers. Foreword by Ron Tyler.
(Austin: Woodmont Books, 2000. Pp. xvi+6o6. Foreword, preface, introduc-
tion, dictionary of artists, appendices, bibliography. ISBN 0-9669-622-0-6.
$125.oo, cloth.)
Up until very recently, relatively few published biographical dictionaries devot-
ed exclusively to Texas artists were available to collectors and scholars. Those
that did exist, while representing valiant efforts for their time, were outdated
and/or inadequate for purposes of serious study. These standbys included
Frances Battaile Fisk's A History of Texas Artzsts and Sculptors (Abilene: Privately
published, 1928), Esse Forrester O'Brien's Art and Artists zn Texas (Dallas: Tardy
Publishing Company, 1935), Pauline A. Pinckney's Paznting in Texas: The Nine-
teenth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), and Goldie Capers
Smith's Creative Arts in Texas: A Handbook of Biography (Nashville: Cokesbury
Press, 1926). Of course, exhibition catalogues, biographies of individual artists,
and archival repositories could be used to supplement these works. This dry
spell was broken in 1999 by Paula L. and Michael R. Grauer's Dictionary of Texas
Artists, I8oo-1945 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press).

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