January 29, 2001(2001-01-29) (aged93) El Paso, Texas, U.S.
Pen name
Tom Lea
Occupation
Author, painter
Nationality
American
Genre
Non-fiction, murals, fiction
Subject
West Texas World War II Ranching Bullfighting North-central Mexico
Spouse
Nancy June Taylor (1927; her death 1936) Sarah Dighton (1938; his death)
Children
James Dighton Lea
The mural, Southwest, by Tom Lea, 1956, El Paso Public Library, El Paso, Texas
The bulk of his art and literary works were about Texas, north-central Mexico, and his World War II experience in the South Pacific and Asia. Two of his most popular novels, The Brave Bulls and The Wonderful Country, are widely considered to be classics of southwestern American literature.[1]
Early life and education
Lea was born on July 11, 1907, in El Paso, Texas, to Thomas Calloway Lea Jr. and Zola May (née Utt).[2][3] From 1915 to 1917, his father was mayor of El Paso. As mayor, his father made a public declaration that he would arrest Pancho Villa if he dared enter El Paso, after Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico on March 9, 1916.[2] Villa then responded by offering a thousand pesos gold bounty on Lea.[2] For six months Tom and his brother Joe had to have a police escort to and from school, and there was a 24-hour guard on the house.[4][5]
He graduated from El Paso High School in 1924.[4] From 1924 to 1926 he attended the Art Institute of Chicago and then apprenticed and assisted John W. Norton, a Chicago muralist, from 1927 to 1932.[6]
In 1927, he wed Nancy June Taylor, a fellow art student. In 1930 Norton suggested that Tom take an art tour of Europe to study the masters. He and Nancy went to Paris and saw an exhibit of Eugène Delacroix at the Louvre, and Delacroix was his "favorite". Next they traveled to Florence, Orvieto, Rome, Capri. Then, after a four-month tour, it was back to Le Havre to catch the SS Ile de France.[7]
After the tour of Italy they moved to Santa Fe to be with other artists and be in the Southwest. When Nancy became ill (a botched appendectomy) they moved to El Paso, and Lea found work from the Federal Art Project (FAP) for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which during the Great Depression hired artists, and in Lea's case to paint murals in government buildings.[8]
Career
The Two-Thousand Yard Stare
Lea won the United States Department of the Treasury competition for a mural commission in the United States Post Office Department Building (now the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building) in Washington, D.C., called The Nesters. His other murals included the post offices in Odessa, Texas (Stampede), Pleasant Hill, Missouri (Back Home, April 1865), and Seymour, Texas (Comanches). In 1936, his wife (in April), grandmother (in June), and his mother (in December), all died in that year.[9]
In 1937 he started doing illustration work, and this led to a partnership with a friend of his father, author J. Frank Dobie. Dobie wrote about the rough life of settling the Texas frontier and Lea's illustrations are mostly of cowboys and the wild Texas landscapes.[6] While painting a mural in El Paso Federal Courthouse (Pass of the North), he met and married his second wife, Sarah Catherine Beane (née Dighton), in July 1938.[citation needed] Sarah had come from Monticello, Illinois, to El Paso to visit friends. Sarah had a son, James (Jim), from a previous marriage whom Lea adopted.[citation needed] While painting his courthouse mural, Lea also met artist José Cisneros and they were able to connect as friends and business contacts.[10] That same year his started his lifelong partnership with Carl Hertzog (Jean Carl Hertzog Sr.), an El Paso book designer and typographer. 1937–1938 would prove to be the antithesis of 1936, providing Lea with three lifelong partners and friends.[11]
In 1940 he applied for and won Rosenwald Fellowship, but by the end of the summer of 1941, he got a telegram from LIFE asking him to go to sea with the United States Navy on a North Atlantic Patrol. In the fall of 1941, he decided to paint for LIFE as war artist and correspondent aboard a destroyer.[12] He traveled all over the world with the United States military from 1941 to 1945. This included: China, Great Britain, Italy, India, North Africa, North Atlantic, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific. He went on deployment with the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in the Pacific Ocean in 1942, where he met the famous Army Air Corps pilot Jimmy Doolittle. Lea was on board the Hornet (September 15, 1942) when the USS Wasp was sunk by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine.[13] He painted several pictures of the sinking of the Wasp. In 1943, during his visit to China, he met Theodore H. White, and he painted the portraits of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong Mei-ling; and General Claire Lee Chennault, leader of the Flying Tigers.[6]
It was during his time in the western Pacific in 1944 as a combat correspondent with the United States 1st Marine Division during the invasion of the tiny island of Peleliu that he would really make a name for himself among the readers of LIFE. "My work there consisted of trying to keep from getting killed and trying to memorize what I saw and felt," Lea says.[14] His vivid, realistic, images of the beach landing, and Battle of Peleliu, would impact both readers and himself. The Price and That 2,000 Yard Stare would become among his most famous works.[6] (1,794 Americans died in a two-month period in what many call the war's most controversial battle, due to its questionable strategic value and high death toll.[15][16])
The painting was done with devotion and without haste...
-- Tom Lea On: Study for Sarah in the Summertime[17]
In 1947 Lea finished a graphite sketch on kraft paper of his wife called Study for Sarah in the Summertime. He had started the sketch two years earlier, about six months after he got home from the war. The life size work (71" × 30¼") was based on a photograph, taken of Sarah in the backyard of their home at 1520 Raynolds Boulevard in El Paso, that he had carried in his wallet throughout the war. An oil painting, Sarah in the Summertime (67" × 32"), was then done from the sketch. He spent longer on this combined work than any other painting.[17][18]
After finishing his last novel, The Hands of Cantu (an account of horse training in 16th-century Nueva Vizcaya) in 1964, Lea traveled to Boston to meet with his publishers, Little, Brown and Company. He told them that he wasn't interested in another novel, so they suggested a book about his pictures. This 1968 work, A Picture Gallery, was his "autobiography", writing of why and when he did his paintings. Working on A Picture Gallery would lead him to once again focus on painting and turn away from working on literature.[19] Right before finishing this work, Baylor University paid tribute to his writing by bestowing him, and his long-time friend Carl Hertzog, with an honorary doctorate's in literature.[20][21] The El Paso Museum of Art established its Tom Lea Gallery in 1996, and in 1997 he was honored as a Fellow in the Texas State Historical Association. President George W. Bush had Lea’s painting ‘Rio Grande’, displayed in the Oval Office.[22]
Lea gravestone at Texas State Cemetery in Austin, Texas
He died on 29 January 2001 in El Paso, Texas, at the age of 93.
2000 Republican National Convention Nomination Acceptance Speech
My friend, the artist Tom Lea of El Paso, Texas, captured the way I feel about our great land, a land I love. He and his wife, he said, "Live on the east side of the mountain. It's the sunrise side, not the sunset side. It is the side to see the day that is coming, not to see the day that has gone.
-- President George W. Bush Acceptance Speech 2000 Republican National Convention[23]
____: Colonel John W. Thomason Jr. Award for Artistic Achievement – United States Marine Corps[24]
1995: Hall of Great Westerners – National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum[6]
2007: Tom Lea Centennial Celebration – United States Congress
____: S. Res. 267 (Hutchison Resolution) – U.S. Senate July 2007 as "Tom Lea Month"[25]
____: H. Res. 519 – U.S. House of Representatives[26]
Art
Literature
1992: Owen Wister Award – Western Writers of America
Art works
Public murals
State of Texas Centennial Commission, Federal Art Project (FAP) for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Public Works of Art Project for the United States Department of the Treasury.
"Illinois Heritage Series" (4 murals; 8' H. × W. 12' each) – Calumet Park Field House, Chicago, Illinois, 1927–28
Native-American Ceremony
Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet
Native-American Hunting Party Returning Home
Native-Americans and Fur Traders
(These murals were restored in 2005 by The Chicago Park District and The Chicago Conservation Center.)[27]
South Park Commission Building (auditorium), Gage Park, Chicago, Illinois, 1931
Hall of State, Texas State Fair Grounds, Dallas, Texas, 1935
The Nesters, – Ariel Rios Federal Building, 1937, mural (lost)
(Environmental Protection Agency; formerly Post Office Department Building & Benjamin Franklin Post Office)
Pass of the North, – El Paso Federal Courthouse, 1938, oil on canvas
Back Home: April 1865, – U.S. Post Office – Pleasant Hill, Missouri, 1939, oil on canvas
Stampede, – U.S. Post Office – Odessa, Texas, 1940, oil on canvas
Comanches, – U.S. Post Office – Seymour, Texas, 1942, oil on canvas
Conquistadors, – New Mexico State University, College Library, Mesilla Park, New Mexico (PWAP funding)
Southwest, – El Paso Public Library, El Paso, Texas, 1954, (donated work)[28]
Paintings
That 2,000 Yard Stare, – United States Army Center of Military History, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., – 1944, oil on canvas
(This painting defined the term "thousand yard stare" in culture.)[29]
Rio Grande, – Oval Office – White House, Washington D.C., – 1954, oil on canvas
1957: The King Ranch. – with Richard King. – Boston: Little, Brown and Company. – 692613
Kingsville, Texas: Printed for the King Ranch by Carl Hertzog. – 2981776
1968: Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery: Paintings and Drawings. – Boston: Little, Brown and Company. – 438075 (autobiography)
1974: In the Crucible of the Sun. – Kingsville, Texas: King Ranch. – 1195170
1998: Battle Stations: A Grizzly from the Coral Sea, Peleliu Landing. – Dallas: Still Point Press. – ISBN978-0-933841-07-9
Fiction works with illustrations
1949: The Brave Bulls, A Novel. – Boston: Little, Brown and Company. – 4622973
2002: – Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. – ISBN978-0-292-74733-3
1952: The Wonderful Country, A Novel. – Boston: Little, Brown and Company. – 288704
2002: – Fort Worth, Texas: TCU Press. – ISBN978-0-87565-261-0
1960: The Primal Yoke, A Novel. – Boston: Little, Brown and Company. – 1306682
1964: The Hands of Cantú. – Boston: Little, Brown and Company. – 1379124
Works about
Lea, Tom (illustrations), and the Fort Worth Art Center, (1961). – Tom Lea. – Fort Worth, Texas: Fort Worth Art Center. – 79168047
Lea, Tom (illustrations and interviews), Rebecca McDowell Craver and Adair Margo, (1995). – Tom Lea: An Oral History. – El Paso, Texas: Texas Western Press. – ISBN978-0-87404-234-4
Lea, Tom (illustrations), and Kathleen G Hjerter, (1989). – The Art of Tom Lea. – College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press. – ISBN978-0-89096-366-1
2003: "A Memorial Edition". – College Station: Texas A&M University Press. – ISBN978-1-58544-282-9
Lea, Tom (illustrations), and Brendan M Greeley, (2008). – The Two Thousand Yard Stare: Tom Lea's World War II. – College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. – ISBN978-1-60344-008-0
Magazine articles
In 2007, Texas author Lou Halsell Rodenberger received the Stirrup Award for best article in Roundup, a publication of Western Writers of America, for her article entitled "Tom Lea, Novelist: The Eyes of an Artist, the Ears of a Writer."[33]
"Artists: Tom Lea". Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). Retrieved 2019-05-09.
Antone, Evan Haywood. – Lea, Thomas Calloway Jr. – Handbook of Texas. – Texas State Historical Association. – Retrieved: 2019-05-08
Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – p.7.
MS 476: Tom Lea papers. – University Library. – University of Texas at El Paso. – Retrieved: 2008-07-04
Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – p.34–38.
J. Tillapaugh, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, "The Popular Culture Heritage of New Deal Muralists Peter Hurd and Tom Lea in West Texas", West Texas Historical Association, annual meeting in Fort Worth, Texas, February 27, 2010
Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – p.51.
"CISNEROS, JOSÉ B."The Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). Retrieved 2019-04-29.
Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – p.52,57,61.
Lea, – Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery, – p.45-46.
Lea, – Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery, – p.64.
Steinberg, Rafael. – "World War II: Island Fighting". – Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Inc. – 1998.
Moody, Sid. – "1,794 Americans Died For An Unneeded Pacific Island". – Associated Press. – (c/o Seattle Times). – September 11, 1994. – Retrieved: 2008-07-04
Zeiler, Thomas W., (2004). – Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, And The End of World War II. – Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc. – p.105. ISBN978-0-8420-2990-2
Lea, – Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery: Paintings and Drawings, – p.98.
Jones, James, and Tom Lea (illustration), (1975). – "Two-Thousand-Yard Stare". – WW II. – (c/o Military History Network). – Grosset and Dunlap. – pp.113,116. – ISBN0-448-11896-3
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