1981 Frost Brothers Christmas Catalog

In 1981 Brad Braune was commissioned by the South Texas Department Store chain of Frost Brothers of San Antonio to do a painting for the cover of their 1981 Christmas catalog.  They requested a painting of the traditional Christmas cactus (succulent variety).  Brad made several attempts to do what they asked, but was not happy with any of the paintings.  At that time he was producing a series of paintings of South Texas prickly pear cactus.  He decided to make one last attempt at a very personal version of a "Christmas Cactus".  He went out and cut several ears from a prickly pear and arranged them on the ground for a photograph to work from.

These are the polaroid pictures from which the original painting was created.

The end result was the painting you see.  It seems hard to imagine that no one had ever thought of this idea before, but there is no documentation of a cactus wreath before 1981.  Within the few years that followed, the wreaths would begin to appear in Floral shops around Texas and later all over the country.  The Prickly Pear wreath is now a traditional Southwestern ornament during the holiday season.  It was this painting that inspired the making of actual wreaths.