DALLAS, TX.- Five important early 20th-century Spanish paintings have been acquired by the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University through a purchase and partial gift from Alan B. Coleman, former dean of SMU’s Cox School of Business, and his wife, Janet M. Coleman.

“The Colemans have spent the last 30 years building one of the finest collections of early 20th- century Spanish paintings in the United States,” said Mark Roglán, director of the Meadows Museum. “The addition of these five important works to the Meadows collection will not only strengthen the holdings from this period but also will better explain the evolution of these important artists who were active in Europe during one of the most fascinating and complex artistic periods in art history, between Impressionism and Cubism.”

The Colemans are longtime supporters of the arts at SMU. Coleman, who is Caruth Professor of Financial Management Emeritus in the Cox School of Business, helped establish, with Meadows School of the Arts, SMU’s interdisciplinary M.A./M.B.A. of arts management. He serves on the Meadows Museum Advisory Council, and Janet Coleman is a former Meadows Museum docent. The paintings complement the Meadows Museum’s collection of 10th- through 21st-century Spanish art by masters such as Velázquez, Goya, Miró and Picasso.

The acquisition includes the following paintings:

• Moulin Rouge, Exit to the Box Seats (Moulin Rouge, salida a los palcos), c. 1902, by Hermenegildo Anglada-Camarasa (1871-1959). The oil sketch reproduces the interior of one of the most famous cabarets in history, the Moulin Rouge, in Paris. This vibrant painting is the only painting by this Catalan artist in the Meadows Museum collection.

• Segovia, from Perogordo Road (Segovia desde el camino de Perogordo), c. 1908, by Aureliano de Beruete y Moret (1845-1912). Beruete’s architectural and urban landscape complements another view of Segovia by the same artist already in the Meadows Museum collection, which features a section of the Tagus River gorge in the city of Toledo. Considered together, the two paintings clearly demonstrate the artist’s devotion to the Castilian landscape.

• Allegory (Alegoría), c. 1903, by Joaquim Mir Trinxet (1873-1940). Mir, a member of the Catalan Modernisme movement in Barcelona, is considered one of the most innovative Spanish landscape painters of his time. This painting of a garden with peacocks shows the pure color and bold brushwork for which Mir was celebrated throughout his lifetime.

• Snow and Thaw (Nieve y deshielo), c. 1900, by Darío de Regoyos y Valdés (1857-1913). This is the Meadows’s second work by the only Spanish artist that was an active member of the Post-Impressionist movement. The snow scene encapsulates many of the subjects and techniques of the Post-Impressionists, such as scenes of the countryside or modern life with attention to light and painterly brushwork.

• Farm-House, Alcira (Alquería de Alcira), c. 1903, by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923). The painting is now the earliest of Meadows Museum’s four Sorolla paintings. The vigorously painted work by the plein-air artist significantly enhances this area of the museum’s collection, and it will be included in the forthcoming exhibition Sorolla and America, currently being organized by the Meadows Museum and scheduled to open in December 2013.

Natives of California, the Colemans began collecting Spanish art in the late 1970s, after Coleman joined SMU in 1974 as the Caruth Chair in Financial Management at the University’s School of Business Administration, now Cox School of Business. Time spent in Peru and at the Meadows Museum influenced their love for Spanish art. Dr. Willam B. Jordan, former Meadows Museum director,encouraged them to collect early 20th-century Spanish paintings. They loaned four of the paintings the Meadows has acquired to the museum for the 2005-2006 exhibition Prelude to Spanish Modernism: Fortuny to Picasso.

“We’ve long had the idea that these works should go to the Meadows Museum,” Coleman said. “SMU has been so good to us over the years, and the ties between our family and the University are many: my wife, Janet, our two daughters, and son-in-law are SMU graduates. It just seems natural. Over the past decade we’ve increased our admiration for Dr. Roglán and his work at the museum, and we hope that this acquisition will strengthen the 20th-century holdings in the collection.”

Coleman became dean of the School of Business Administration in 1975. Under his leadership, the school added five endowed chairs and raised $12 million in endowment funds. He served on the search committee that hired Meadows School of the Arts Dean Eugene Bonelli in 1978 and later worked with Bonelli to establish SMU’s interdisciplinary graduate degree, the M.A./M.B.A. in arts management. In 1981 he became president of SMU’s Southwestern Graduate School of Banking Foundation. Upon his retirement in 1988, SMU named him Caruth Professor of Financial Management Emeritus.

Prior to joining SMU, Alan Coleman served on the faculties of the graduate schools of business of Harvard and Stanford universities. While on Stanford’s faculty, as part of a U.S. foreign aid project, he established and served as dean of South America’s first graduate school of business, Escuela de Administración de Negocios para Graduados (now a university, UESAN). In honor of his service there he was decorated by the government of Peru and later awarded an honorary doctorate by the university.

Coleman earned his undergraduate degree at the University of San Francisco and his M.B.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. He spent several years in business as president of Yosemite Park and Curry Co. and the Sun Valley Co. Janet M. Coleman graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in education. During her time in Dallas she volunteered as a docent at the Meadows Museum. She earned a Master’s degree in liberal arts from SMU in 1981.