DeYoung, Harry Anthony

Harry Anthony DeYoung

  (Am. 1893-1956)

Born in Chicago, DeYoung studied at the University of Illinois, Urbana, under Edward John Lake and taught children’s art classes in Chicago (1914 – 1916). He enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was a student of F. De Forrest Shook and John Warner Norton, and won distinction in 1917 as an honor student. After military service in World War I (1917 – 1918), he returned to teach and paint in Chicago, interspersed with teaching assignments elsewhere; assistant instructor at Bailey’s Harbor (Michigan) Summer School of Art (1922); director of the Glenwood (Illinois) School of Landscape Painting (1923 – 1924); director of Midwest Summer School of Art, Paw Paw, Michigan (1924 – 1929), and instructor at the National Academy of Art, Chicago (1927 – 1928). Attracted to San Antonio by the Edgar B. Davis Competition, De Young settled in the city in 1928 and established the De Young Art School. In the years that followed, he conducted a summer painting camp at Fort Davis and plein-air classes in Monterrey, Mexico, in Port Isabel, Eagle Pass, Abilene, Brownwood, and Boerne and in New Mexico. Beginning in 1940, he served as director of the Summer School of Art, Sul Ross State Teachers College, Alpine. He taught summer classes in Brownwood and tri-monthly classes in Brownsville. In 1942 he suffered a paralyzing stroke that resulted in his hospitalization in the Veterans Administration Hospital, Waco, and forced him to learn to paint with his left hand. De Young died in Waco and was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, San Antonio.