Jerry Bywaters's Share Cropper is a tribute to the hardscrabble dust farmers of northern Texas. The man's stark, severe gaze and simplified forms evoke the same dignity and forthrightness of works by a fellow regionalist, Iowa-based Grant Wood. The painting also reflects the vivid-even harsh-realism of broader influences such as the German New Objectivity of the earlier 20th century.

The impact of Jerry Bywaters upon the Dallas art world is almost impossible to describe briefly. He was a founding member of the Lone Star Printmakers; an editor of Southwestern Arts; a professor at his alma mater, Southern Methodist University; and director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts for twenty-one years. Bywaters made, encouraged, acquired, and influenced much of the art that defined the city.

Excerpt from

Wiliam Keyse Rudolph, DMA label text, 2005

• SMU Meadows Museum
  Check out this painting by Jerry Bywaters titled Sharecropper's Wife which was created in the same year as the Dallas Museum of Art's Share Cropper.

• Bywaters, Jerry, Texas State Historical Association Biography
  Read more about Jerry Bywaters on the Handbook of Texas Online (published by the Texas State Historical Association).