Lewis Woods Teel (Texas / California, 1883-1960), "The Lonely Ranch: Whetstone Mountains, Arizona", oil on heavyweight paper, signed lower left, handwritten four-page Christmas greeting to Edward Francis Revaleon

sight: 6 x 8 in., overall: 9 x 12 in. 

Provenance: Passed by family inheritance from the addressee, Edward Francis Revaleon, to the present owner in Huntington Beach, California

Born in Clarksville, Texas, Lewis Teel was a commercial artist who became a self-taught landscape and pastel portrait painter. He is known for his realistic, atmospheric desert landscapes. The son of a pioneer Texas family and raised in El Paso, Teel spent two years in Detroit, Michigan, working in an auto plant. Afterwards, he spent several years traveling and studying paintings in museums. He returned to El Paso in 1916 where he made a living drawing pastel portraits and designing magazine covers, but on the advice of Joseph Henry Sharp, a painter from Taos, New Mexico, he took up desert landscapes as his main subject in 1927. He also operated the "Desert Shop," a gallery for local artists. He painted in southern Arizona in the late 1920s and 1930s, and in 1928, he competed in the famous Edgar B. Davis Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibition in San Antonio.