Thomas C. Lea, III

Infobox Writer
name = Thomas Calloway "Tom" Lea, III


imagesize =
caption =
pseudonym = Tom Lea
birthdate =birth date|1907|07|11
birthplace =El Paso, Texas
deathdate =death date and age|2001|01|29|1907|07|11
deathplace =El Paso, Texas
occupation = Author, Painter
nationality = American
period =
genre = non-fiction, murals, fiction
subject = West Texas
World War II
ranching
bullfighting
North-central Mexico
movement =
spouse = Nancy June Taylor
(1927; her death 1936)
Sarah Dighton
(1938; his death)
partner =
children = James Dighton Lea
relatives =
influences =
influenced =


website =

Thomas Calloway "Tom" Lea, III (July 11, 1907—January 29, 2001) was a noted 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 "The Wonderful Country", are widely considered to be classics of southwestern American literature.Fact|date=July 2008

Biography

Born in El Paso, Texas, to Thomas Calloway Lea, Jr. (a prominent attorney) and Zola May Utt. From 1915-1917, his father was mayor of El Paso. As mayor, Tom, Jr., made a public declaration that he would arrest Pancho Villa, after Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, if Villa dared enter El Paso. Villa then responded by offering a thousand pesos gold bounty on Lea. For six months Tom, III., 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. - [http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/LL/fle92.html Lea, Thomas Calloway Jr.] - "Handbook of Texas". - Texas State Historical Association. - Retrieved: 2008-07-05] [Lea, - "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. [http://libraryweb.utep.edu/special/findingaids/tomlea.cfm MS 476: Tom Lea papers] . - University Library. - University of Texas at El Paso. - Retrieved: 2008-07-04]

He married Nancy June Taylor in 1927, 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", - p.34-38.]

After the tour of Italy they moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico 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. He also won the United States Department of the Treasury competition for a mural commission in the United State Post Office Department Building (now the Ariel Rios Federal Building) in Washington, D.C., called "The Nesters". His WPA 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. [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, that Lea adopted. That same year his started his life-long 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 life-long partners and friends. [Lea, - "Tom Lea, An Oral History", - p.52,57,61.]

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. [Lea, - "Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery", - p.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, were 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.] In 1943 he during his visit to China, he met Theodore H. White, and he painted the portraits of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong May-ling; the head of the "Flying Tigers", and General Claire Lee Chennault.

But, it was his time, in the western Pacific in 1944, as an "embedded" reporter 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". 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. (1,794 Americans died in a two month period it what many call the war's most controversial battle, due to its questionable strategic value and high death toll. [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. ISBN 9780842029902] )

Quote box
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quote="The painting was done with devotion and without haste..."
source=Tom Lea
On: "Study for Sarah in the Summertime" Lea, - "Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery: Paintings and Drawings", - p.98.]
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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" x 30 1/4") 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" x 32"), was then done from the sketch. He spent longer on this combined work than any other painting. [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 Viscaya) 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 payed tribute to his writing by bestowing him, and his long-time friend Carl Hertzog, with a honorary doctorate's in literature. ["Round 1". - "TIME". - June 09, 1967. - Retrieved: 2008-07-07] [http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/fhe46_print.html Hertzog, Jean Carl, Sr.] . - "Handbook of Texas". - Texas State Historical Association. - Retrieved: 2008-07-07]

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quote="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."
source=President George W. Bush
Acceptance Speech
2000 Republican National Convention [Republican Convention 2000: [http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/conventions/republican/transcripts/bush.html "Governor Bush delivers remarks at the Republican National Convention"] . - CNN. - August 3, 2000. - Retrieved: 2008-07-04]
title=2000 Republican National Convention Nomination Acceptance Speech
date=

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 Corps [ [http://wwwc.house.gov/reyes/news_detail.asp?id=1212 Reyes’s bill honoring El Pasoan Tom Lea passes U.S. House] . Congressman Silvestre Reyes. - July 23, 2007. - Retrieved: 2008-07-05]
* 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" [ [http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=sr110-267 Text of Legislation] | [http://hutchison.senate.gov/pr071007b.html Senate Passes Hutchison Resolution Honoring El Paso Artist Tom Lea] . - Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. - July 10, 2007. - Retrieved: 2008-07-05]
**____: H. Res. 519 — U.S. House of Representatives [ [http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr110-519 Text of Legislation] | [http://wwwc.house.gov/reyes/news_detail.asp?id=1212 Reyes’s bill honoring El Pasoan Tom Lea passes U.S. House] . Congressman Silvestre Reyes. - July 23, 2007. - Retrieved: 2008-07-05]

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. x 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 The Chicago Park District and The Chicago Conservation Center.) [ [http://www.chicagoconservation.com/pages/Audience%20Handbook.pdf "Celebration of the Mural Preservation Project"] . - The Chicago Park District and The Chicago Conservation Center. - (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document). - Retrieved: 2008-07-07]
*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 (destroyed)::(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) [ [http://www.elpasotexas.gov/library/archive/2007/news070107.asp Tom Lea Centennial: Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Tom Lea’s Birth] . - El Paso Public Library. - Retrieved: 2008-07-07]

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.) Jones, James, and Tom Lea (illustration), (1975). - [http://www.milhist.net/global/2000yard.html "Two-Thousand-Yard Stare"] . - "WW II". - (c/o Military History Network). - Grosset and Dunlap. - pp.113,116. - ISBN 0448118963]
* "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) [ [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/11/20021113-4.html "Mrs. Bush's Remarks for 100th Anniversary of the West Wing Symposium"] . - White House Historical Association. - November 13, 2002. - Retrieved: 2008-07-05] [http://www.maaa.org/exhi_usa/exhibitions/archive/tomlea/pg_tomlea.pdf Light from the Sky: A Tom Lea Retrospective, 1907–2001] . - Mid-America Arts Alliance. - (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document). - Retrieved: 2008-07-05]
* "Southwest, Study for", — American Art Museum, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C., — 1956. Oil on canvas, 10 x 32 in. (Frame: 19 1/2 x 41 1/4 x 2)::(This is a scale study of the mural, "Southwest", at the El Paso Public Library.)

Major exhibitions

* 1948: Dallas Museum of Art — Dallas, Texas, — "Drawings and Illustrations" (February 8-March 7)
* 1948: Dallas Museum of Art — Dallas, Texas, — "Paintings/Western Beef Cattle" (October 7, 1950-January 14)
* 1961: Fort Worth Art Center — Fort Worth, Texas
* 1963: El Paso Museum of Art — El Paso, Texas
* 1969: Institute of Texan Cultures — San Antonio, Texas
* 1971: El Paso Museum of Art — El Paso, Texas
* 1994: El Paso Museum of Art — El Paso, Texas

Permanent collections

* Austin, Texas:
** The Tom Lea Collections — Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin,
* El Paso, Texas
** Tom Lea Gallery — El Paso Museum of Art
** Tom Lea Papers — University Library—Special Collections at the University of Texas at El Paso
** Tom Lea — Adair Margo Gallery

Bibliography

Works by

Illustrative works

*1939: Dobie, J. Frank (author). - "Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver". - Boston: Little, Brown and Company. - OCLC search link|9049964::1984: - Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. - ISBN 9780292703810
*1941: Dobie, J. Frank (author). - "The Longhorns". - Boston: Little, Brown and Company. - OCLC search link|561214::1980: - Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. - ISBN 9780292746275
*1946: "Calendar of Twelve Travelers through the Pass of the North". - El Paso: Carl Hertzog. - OCLC search link|2691472::1981: - El Paso, Texas: El Paso Electric Company. - OCLC search link|7968462

Non-fiction works with illustrations

*1945: "Peleliu Landing". - El Paso: Carl Hertzog. - OCLC search link|2637403
*1949: "Bullfight Manual for Spectators". - Ciudad Juárez, Mexico: Plaza de Toros. - OCLC search link|1862606::1957: - El Paso, Texas: Carl Hertzog. - OCLC search link|3197954
*1957: "The King Ranch". - with Richard King. - Boston: Little, Brown and Company. - OCLC search link|692613::Kingsville, Texas: Printed for the King Ranch by Carl Hertzog. - OCLC search link|2981776
*1968: "Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery: Paintings and Drawings". - Boston: Little, Brown and Company. - OCLC search link|438075 (autobiography)
*1974: "In the Crucible of the Sun". - Kingsville, Texas: King Ranch. - OCLC search link|1195170
*1998: "Battle Stations: A Grizzly from the Coral Sea, Peleliu Landing". - Dallas: Still Point Press. - ISBN 9780933841079

Fiction works with illustrations

*1949: "The Brave Bulls, A Novel". - Boston: Little, Brown and Company. - OCLC search link|4622973::2002: - Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. - ISBN 9780292747333
*1952: "The Wonderful Country, A Novel". - Boston: Little, Brown and Company. - OCLC search link|288704::2002: - Fort Worth, Texas: TCU Press. - ISBN 9780875652610
*1960: "The Primal Yoke, A Novel". - Boston: Little, Brown and Company. - OCLC search link|1306682
*1964: "The Hands of Cantú". - Boston: Little, Brown and Company. - OCLC search link|1379124

Works about

*Lea, Tom (illustrations), and the Fort Worth Art Center, (1961). - "Tom Lea". - Fort Worth, Texas: Fort Worth Art Center. - OCLC search link|79168047
*Lea, Tom (illustrations and interviews), Rebecca McDowell Craver and Adair Margo, (1995). - "Tom Lea: An Oral History". - El Paso, Texas: Texas Western Press. - ISBN 9780874042344
*Lea, Tom (illustrations), and Kathleen G Hjerter, (1989). - "The Art of Tom Lea". - College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press. - ISBN 9780890963661::2003: "A Memorial Edition". - College Station: Texas A&M University Press. - ISBN 9781585442829
*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. - ISBN 9781603440080

References

External links

* [http://www.tomlea.net/ Tom Lea - Artist and Texas Legend] - TomLea.net
* [http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/art/holdings/texas/lea/ The Tom Lea Collection] - Harry Ransom Center - University of Texas at Austin

Persondata
NAME= Lea, Tom
ALTERNATIVE NAMES= Lea, Thomas Calloway, III
SHORT DESCRIPTION= American artist, writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH= birth date|1907|7|11|mf=y
PLACE OF BIRTH= El Paso, Texas
DATE OF DEATH= death date|2001|1|29|mf=y
PLACE OF DEATH= El Paso, Texas