Jack Bryant (1929-2012) was well known regionally, statewide, and even in national Western Art circles. His work in painting, sculpture, and other creative mediums is valued highly by prominent people such as Larry Mahan, rodeo cowboy; John Justin of Justin Boots; and baseball player and entrepreneur Nolan Ryan, all of whom he immortalized in bronze.

A Bryant bronze that the city of Grapevine commissioned now stands in their 800-year-old sister city in Austria. Bryant was born April 4, 1929 in Fort Worth, where he grew up on the North Side in the stockyards area. That Western culture of cattle and horses may have shaped his desire to recreate them on canvas and in bronze, for he decided to be an artist when still a youngster in...