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Chapter 13. 1908
- Texas State Historical Association
- Chapter
- Additional Information
C h a p t e r 1 3 1908 Goodbye Chas. Tunison The year 1908, like 1904, was a transformative one for Julian. Of the thirty-five known Julian Onderdonk paintings dated 1908, two depict winter scenes, four appear to be spring and five or six summer, while twenty are autumn scenes. (The remainder cannot be assigned to a season or are not illustrated anywhere.) This sudden jump in the number of dated works signed with Julian’s own name is most easily explained by two factors: 1), that having finished his work for the State Fair of Texas around mid-September, he devoted himself to painting, and 2), that he had ended or severely curtailed his relationship with Tunison and was signing his own name to all or nearly all of his works. g Julian had a tendency to dislike art dealers in general and those he felt exploited artists in particular. By the end of their business relationship, Julian’s intense dislike of Chas. Tunison bordered on hatred.1 The exact nature of his dealings with Tunison are buried in the sands of time, but based on what we know from Julian and Gertrude’s writings, we can deduce that Chas. Tunison took advantage of Julian’s naiveté in business matters. Tunison also may have been employing a subtle blackmail to keep Julian producing works and allowing Tunison to market them. Something of that nature is suggested in Julian’s description of Chas. Tunison and their relationship: While this man did not impress me favorably, I had been having such hard times that I looked over the things that did not ring right and tried to see a way out. I thought that that here at last was a means to get me through the next few months, the most dreaded time, the summer. I therefore drifted on into one arrangement after another until I soon found myself in so complicated agreements that I hardly knew which way to turn to get out.2 No doubt the dealings that did not “ring right” to Julian caused him to resent Tunison all the more. Tunison’s financial exploitation of Julian must have been particularly aggravating. Their original agreement specified that 30 x 40 inch paintings would bring Julian $12.50, the 20 x 30 inch size at least $6, and smaller works $2 to $3. The newspaper ads for Chas. Turner paintings discussed at the end of chapter 11 reveal that the highest , non-sale price for a Chas. Turner painting was $130, and we can safely assume that was for the largest size. The lowest price any Chas.Turner painting was offered at was $12.50, and again it seems reasonable to assume that was for the smallest size, probably 6 x 9 inches. The range for paintings sold at bargain sale prices was from $8.75 to $79. It is hard to know how much the department stores marked up the paintings they acquired from Tunison, but if we assume a 100 percent markup, Tunison was receiving $65 for a large painting and giving Julian only $12.50. For a small painting, Tunison would have received $6.25 and Julian’s share would have been a mere $2. At some point, Julian would have become aware of the inequity and would have felt abused by Tunison. In his description of Tunison, Julian wrote: What were his physical characteristics? Ah! What hopelessness to try to describe the threadbare, slinking creature as he was when I met him. Although his general appearance came to gradually be more prosperous looking after time, and his clothes seemed better, more means to purchase with, no doubt, his eyes, his sharp-seeing, his deceiving, lying eyes never changed.3 No doubt the improvement in Tunison’s “means to purchase” had come at the expense of Julian and his family. Charles E.Tunison What do we really know about Charles E. Tunison? Ironically, like the Onderdonks, he came from very old Dutch stock. The Tunisons had come to New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century about the same time as the Onderdonks.The earliest record of the name dates from 1639 when Teunis Nyssen came from Bunnik, a village in the province of Utrecht, Holland. He had a plantation on Manhattan and later in Flatbush, Brooklyn. By 1667 the name had evolved and military records show a Cornelius Tunissen, and later, a Garret Tunison, who served as a surgeon in Lamb’s Regiment of...