Moonlight glimmers off water in the far distance of this scene, marking the course of Texas’s Brazos River as it recedes toward the horizon. Fort Worth painters Scott and Stuart Gentling wanted this picture to inspire memories of the river’s past life. “Camping at night on the Brazos River was one of the highlights of our growing-up years,” Scott explained. During the 1960s, when the brothers were in their 20s, the last of a series of dams was completed on the Brazos, changing the flow of the river and forever altering the lives of humans and animals along its banks.

Black-crowned Night Heron is one of 40 watercolors of birds that the Gentlings painted for Of Birds and Texas (1986), an elephant folio of color prints. The Carter houses these original paintings along with the largest public collection of art and archival material related to the Gentlings’ life and work.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)