Tom Lea (Texas, 1907-2001), "Sketch of a Goring, Mexico 1947", pencil on paper, signed, captioned, and dated 1947 at lower center

sight: 11 x 9 in., frame: 18.5 x 15 in.

Provenance: Property from a Kerens, Texas collection 

Tom Lea was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, and trained at the Art Institute of Chicago beginning at age seventeen. From 1926 to 1933, Lea worked as a mural assistant to noted muralist John Warner Norton, an experience that taught him strong compositional sense, and funded a year of study in Italy. Deeply influenced by summers spent on Texas and New Mexico ranches, Lea's style combined disciplined draftsmanship with narrative realism, often depicting Southwestern landscapes, ranch life, and later, the human drama of war. After returning to El Paso in 1936, he produced WPA library and post office murals and gained national prominence through illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post and Life magazine; during World War II he served as a combat artist for Life, documenting multiple theaters of war with stark immediacy, earning a Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Navy. In the postwar years, he continued mural and easel painting, notably creating a major series on the evolution of the cattle industry and authoring The King Ranch (1957), cementing his reputation as a leading visual chronicler of Texas and the American West.