Tom Lea Biography
July 11, 1907 – January 28, 2001
Tom Lea was born in El Paso, Texas on July 11, 1907 to a frontier lawyer and his wife, Tom and Zola Utt Lea. Tom Lea Sr. was mayor of El Paso from 1915-1917 during the stormy years of the Mexican Revolution. Tom Lea Jr. attended public schools in El Paso from 1912-1924 and, through his art teacher, learned about the Art Institute of Chicago and the noted muralist, John Warner Norton, who taught there. Lea attended the Art Institute from 1924-1926, studying briefly under Norton and becoming his apprentice. From 1926-1933, Lea worked as a mural painter and commercial artist in Chicago and married fellow art student, Nancy Taylor. He earned enough money to travel third class to Europe in 1930, studying masters like Eugene Delacroix in Paris and Piero della Francesca and Luca Signorelli in Italy. Upon returning to Chicago, he continued work for Norton, leaving in 1933 for the place he loved visiting as a boy, New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment.
In Santa Fe, Tom Lea worked for the Laboratory of Anthropology, did illustrations for Santa Fe Magazine and worked briefly for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). After Nancy Lea suffered a botched appendectomy, the Leas returned to El Paso where Nancy died in 1936. Living back home, Tom Lea completed murals for the Texas Centennial celebration and for the Branigan Library in Las Cruces. He competed for government projects under the U.S. Treasury Department, Section of Fine Arts and won competitions for murals across the United States including the Benjamin Franklin Post Office, Washington, D.C.; Federal Building, El Paso, Texas; Burlington Railroad Station, Lacrosse, Wisconsin; Post Office, Pleasant Hill, Missouri; Post Office, Odessa, Texas; and, Post Office, Seymour, Texas.
In 1938 he met and married Sarah Dighton, who became his lifelong partner. He met the typographer and book designer Carl Hertzog while working in his El Paso studio, as well as the noted Texas writer, J. Frank Dobie. These friendships led to numerous collaborative projects, and Lea illustrated Dobie’s books Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver and The Longhorns. In 1940 Tom Lea applied for and won a Rosenwald Fellowship, but declined it after receiving an invitation from the Editorial Staff of Life Magazine to become an Accredited War Artist-Correspondent. From 1941-1946, Tom Lea became an eye-witness reporter for Life, traveling over 100,000 miles to theatres of war where American forces were involved, including the North Atlantic, on board the Hornet in the South Pacific, a trip to China where he met Theodore H. White, and landing on Peleliu. His writing and painting appeared in Life Magazine between April, 1942 and July, 1945. Lea’s experience of landing with the first assault wave of the First Marines on Peleliu became a book which he wrote and illustrated entitled Peleliu Landing (1945). Following the war, Lea painted Sarah in the Summertime, based on a snapshot he carried in his wallet the entire time he was away. It was “a painter’s votive offering made in the gladness of being home” and, at the end of his life, Lea considered it his magnum opus.