The first exhibit, Tyler Collects I, was a collection of paintings from the Estate of the late LaVelle D. Fender. Mrs. Fender was a member of the Tyler community for many years. She and her husband, the late Harris Fender, acquired a variety of lovely paintings and other works of art over the years.

Among the paintings selected for this exhibition was a magnificent Albert Bierstadt landscape entitled Mount Brewer from Kings River Canyon, California. Bierstadt was born near Dusseldorf in 1830 and moved with his family to New Bedford, Massachusetts at the age of two. In 1853 he returned to Germany to study art with Achenbach and Lessing, sharing a studio with another well-known American painter, Worthington Whittredge. Together the two artists traveled and worked in Italy and Switzerland from 1856 to 1857, when Bierstadt returned to New Bedford. He then began to make his living as an artist by turning his European sketches into paintings.

The format and direction of Bierstadt's art changed dramatically after joining the Frederick Lander surveying expedition to the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite Valley in 1859. The sketches he produced on this as well as subsequent trips west into California and Oregon became the basis of his later paintings. From this point onward, the primary subject matter of his work centered on the grandeur of the American wilderness and he became famous for his panoramic scenes of nature.

The other artists featured in Tyler Collects I were Gabriel Mathieu, Frederick W. Watts, William Brown, and Lajos Markos.

The Tyler Museum of Art wishes to thank the LaVelle D. Fender family of Tyler for their generosity in making this exhibition possible. The Tyler Museum of Art is supported in part by the City of Tyler, Tyler Junior College, the Watson W. Wise Foundation, and the Fair Foundation. Season exhibition sponsors were B.J. and Dub Riter and the Rogers Foundation.