Louis Eyth
American, 1838–1889
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Louis Eyth, portrait painter, was born in 1838 and moved to Galveston, Texas, with some of his family at the age of fourteen. His only known art training came in the years he spent with a firm of daguerreotypists and artists, Blessing Brothers. Eyth later applied for and received the commission of copying the early portrait of Stephen F. Austin (1873); his copy is now in the secretary of state's office in the Capitol.
He went in 1878 to San Antonio, where he and other Texas artists were commissioned by historian James DeShields to provide illustrations for his books. Some of Eyth's paintings for DeShields remain only in photographic reproduction, works such as Surrender of Geronimo (1885) and Death of Bowie: A Command from the Mexicans that He Be Killed (ca. 1878). Though his pictures are rather two-dimensional and though he had some trouble with anatomical details, Eyth had an ability to represent the historic scene with spirit and accuracy. The artist probably died in San Antonio in 1889.
