Thomas Calloway Lea III (July 11, 1907 – January 29, 2001) was an American muralist, illustrator, artist, war correspondent, novelist, and historian. 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.
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). 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. Villa then responded by offering a thousand pesos gold bounty on Lea. 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.Antone, Evan Haywood. – Lea, Thomas Calloway Jr. – Handbook of Texas. – Texas State Historical Association. – Retrieved: May 8, 2019Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – p. 7.
He graduated from El Paso High School in 1924. 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.MS 476: Tom Lea papers. – University Library. – University of Texas at El Paso. – Retrieved: July 4, 2008
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.Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – pp. 34–38.
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 New Deal art projects.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
Career
Lea won the Section of Painting and Sculpture 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 those for 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.Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – p.51.
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. 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. 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. While painting his courthouse mural, Lea also met artist José Cisneros and they were able to connect as friends and business contacts. 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.Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – pp. 52, 57, 61.
In 1940, he applied for and won the 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.Lea, – Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery, – pp. 45–46. 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.Lea, – Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery, – p.64. 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.
Some of Lea's most impactful work came during his time as a combat correspondent with the United States 1st Marine Division at the Battle of Peleliu. The battle, which saw the Marines suffer heavy losses amidst fierce Japanese resistance, became the subject of controversy due to the questionable strategic value of the island.Moody, Sid. – "1,794 Americans Died For An Unneeded Pacific Island". – Associated Press. – (c/o Seattle Times). – September 11, 1994. – Retrieved: July 4, 2008Zeiler, Thomas W., (2004). – Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, And The End of World War II. – Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc. – p. 105. Lea described his time there as "…trying to keep from getting killed and trying to memorize what I saw and felt."Steinberg, Rafael. – "World War II: Island Fighting". – Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Inc. – 1998. His vivid depiction of the beach landing and subsequent battle across the island included two of his most famous works, The Price and The Two-Thousand Yard Stare, both of which spotlight the human toll of the battle.
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.Lea, – Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery: Paintings and Drawings, – p. 98.Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – p. 97.
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.Lea, – Tom Lea, An Oral History, – pp.121–122. 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."Round 1". – TIME. – June 9, 1967. – Retrieved: July 7, 2008Hertzog, Jean Carl, Sr.. – Handbook of Texas. – Texas State Historical Association. – Retrieved: July 7, 2008 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.
Lea died in El Paso on January 29, 2001, at the age of 93.
Awards
Lifetime achievement 1967: Honorary doctorate – Baylor University 1970: Honorary doctorate – Southern Methodist University 1971: Distinguished Public Service Award – United States Navy 1975: Hall of Honor – El Paso County Historical Society 1981: Lon Tinkle Award – Texas Institute of Letters 1990: Ima Hogg Historical Achievement Award ____: Colonel John W. Thomason Jr. Award for Artistic Achievement – United States Marine CorpsReyes’s bill honoring El Pasoan Tom Lea passes U.S. House . Congressman Silvestre Reyes. – July 23, 2007. – Retrieved: July 5, 2008 1995: Hall of Great Westerners – National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum 2007: Tom Lea Centennial Celebration – United States Congress ____: S. Res. 267 (Hutchison Resolution) – U.S. Senate July 2007 as "Tom Lea Month"Text of Legislation| Senate Passes Hutchison Resolution Honoring El Paso Artist Tom Lea . – Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. – July 10, 2007. – Retrieved: July 5, 2008 ____: H. Res. 519 – U.S. House of RepresentativesText of Legislation| Reyes’s bill honoring El Pasoan Tom Lea passes U.S. House . Congressman Silvestre Reyes. – July 23, 2007. – Retrieved: July 5, 2008
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.)"Celebration of the Mural Preservation Project". – The Chicago Park District and The Chicago Conservation Center. – (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document). – Retrieved: July 7, 2008 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)Tom Lea Centennial: Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Tom Lea’s Birth. – El Paso Public Library. – Retrieved: July 7, 2008 First Book about New Mexico 1610, - Branigan Cultural Center - Las Cruces, New Mexico 1935https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=196742 The Branigan Building 1935, Retrieved: March 1, 2024NPS National Register Form Retrieved: March 1, 2024
Paintings Two-Thousand-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.)Jones, James, and Tom Lea (illustration), (1975). – "Two-Thousand-Yard Stare" . – WW II. – (c/o Military History Network). – Grosset and Dunlap. – pp. 113, 116. – Rio Grande, – Oval Office – White House, Washington D.C., – 1954, oil on canvas (since 2001; on loan to George W. and Laura Bush from the El Paso Museum of Art)"Mrs. Bush's Remarks for 100th Anniversary of the West Wing Symposium". – White House Historical Association. – November 13, 2002. – Retrieved: July 5, 2008Light from the Sky: A Tom Lea Retrospective, 1907–2001 . – Mid-America Arts Alliance. – (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document). – Retrieved: July 5, 2008