Allen Tupper True

Allen Tupper True was born May 30, 1881, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the son of Margaret Allen Tupper and Henry Alfonso True, both of New England parentage. His maternal grandmother was beekeeper Ellen Smith Tupper; his aunts included two Unitarian ministers, Eliza Tupper Wilkes and Mila Tupper Maynard, and an educator, Kate Tupper Galpin. His father, Henry True, was a pioneer who had fought against the secession of Texas with Sam Houston, driven cattle on the trail from Abilene to Montana, and had established a mercantile and freight business in Colorado Springs catering to the headlong mining rush pushing west into the mountains. His mother, Margaret True, was to become a noted educator, serving first as a teacher in Colorado Springs and later as President of the Denver School Board and head of the truancy department. She also founded the first kindergarten in El Paso, TX, and was instrumental in establishing in Denver what may have been the first juvenile court in the US. True then spent 1902-1907 at the prestigious Howard Pyle School in Wilmington, DE and Chadds Ford, PA. In 1915, True married Emma Goodman Eaton in Colorado Springs. They had four children: Frank in 1916, Jere in 1919, Edith in 1926 and Allen, Jr. in 1928. ==Work==

While at the Pyle School and later in Boston, True provided illustrations for magazines such as the ''Saturday Evening Post, Outing, Collier's Weekly, Scribners Magazine and Art and Progress'', to name a few; and books such as Clarence E. Mulford's The Orphan, Robert Ames Bennet's Into the Primitive and epic poem The Song of the Indian Wars by John G. Neihardt. In March 1913, Frank Brangwyn asked True to return to London to work on his murals to decorate the Court of Abundance at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. In July 1914, True returned to US (just missing World War One) to install Brangwyn's murals. He also was hired by Union Oil to create a panorama and model for the company's exhibit at the same Exposition. (The Panama Pacific International Exhibition opened in February 1915. Brangwyn murals are now installed in the Herbst Theatre of the War Memorial Building in San Francisco.) The Senate and the House of Representatives chambers of the Wyoming State Capitol Building each contain four large murals by True. He began painting them during the summer of 1917. True created the four Senate murals for $500.00 each and the four House murals for $800.00 each. The murals depict various aspects of the culture, history, and industry of Wyoming. The murals in the Senate chamber are entitled "Indian Chief Cheyenne", "Frontier Cavalry Officer", "Pony Express Rider", and "Railroad Builders/Surveyors". The House murals are entitled "Cattlemen", "Trappers", "Homesteaders", and "Stagecoach". He later painted 16 murals for the Missouri State Capitol (1922–25) and eight murals for the Colorado State Capitol (1934–40). Costing $18,000, the murals consisted of five triptychs, each showing a different aspect of native life. These are Youth, Buffalo Hunt, War, Women, and Art Work. The series concludes with a much larger mural, Happy Hunting Ground. The works were much commented on in the press at the time and were unveiled with much fanfare in 1925. Allen True also restored the murals and decorations in the Central City Opera House, which reopened on July 16, 1932. In 1934, True was asked by Secretary of State of Wyoming Lester C. Hunt to undertake the job of designing the familiar symbol of the bucking horse and rider which is still used on Wyoming's vehicle license plates. Also in 1934, True also was hired as Consulting Artist for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to lay out color schemes and create decorations for major power houses at the giant dams being built during the Thirties and early Forties (Hoover, Grand Coulee, Bonneville, Shasta, Friant and Minidoka). For Hoover Dam, True based his designs on Native American pottery and sand paintings in their decoration. In 1942, The Bureau of Reclamation sent him to camouflage school in Washington, D.C., where he drew up plans to hide America's huge dams from the country's wartime enemies. Brown Palace Hotel Murals In 1931 True began discussing creating a series of transportation themed murals with Charles Boettcher, then the owner of the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. However True was having a difficult time finding a space to work in, but eventually found a studio that he could use in the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C., where he had studied years earlier. It was while doing these works that he discovered that he was allergic to turpentine, and this allowed him to clear up a long-standing skin problem that he had suffered from for many years by never painting with oils again. His two murals, Stagecoach Travel and Airplane Travel, were installed in 1937. Exhibits True had his first one-man show in Denver in November 1908 and his second and third exhibition of paintings at the Denver Public Library in 1910 and 1912. From 1913–1923, exhibitions of his work traveled to over 21 cities across the United States. In 1931, True's murals for Denver's Mountain Telephone & Telegraph building were exhibited at the Architectural and Allied Arts Exposition in New York City. In 1947, the Denver Art Museum showed a collection of True's mural studies and easel paintings. A smaller combined exhibition toured to three U. S. museums. Denver's Colorado Public Television – KBDI-PBS produced an hour-long documentary on Allen Tupper True's life, times and artistic achievements, also titled Allen True’s West, which began airing in October 2009 and also is available on DVD. True's portrait of Abraham Lincoln is in the collection of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and is usually on exhibit. ==Further reading==