Biographical Sketch
Tom Lea, artist and writer, was born in El Paso, Texas on July 11, 1907.
After displaying a natural aptitude for painting and drawing as a child, Lea
received formal training at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1924 to 1926 and
as apprentice and assistant to the Chicago muralist John Norton from 1927 to
1932. In 1930, Lea traveled to Italy to study the techniques of Renaissance
wall painting. One of his early murals
The Nesters, painted in the Post Office
Department Building in Washington, D. C., won a national competition in 1935.
There followed a commission to paint the mural,
Pass of the North, in the United States
Court House in El Paso. J. Frank Dobie commissioned Lea to illustrate two of
his books from this period,
Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver (1939) and
The Longhorns (1940). During World War II,
Life magazine hired Lea as a combination war
correspondent-artist to cover the war in the Pacific.
Lea's experiences during the war supplied him with ample material as a
writer, leading to the publication of
A Grizzly from the Coral Sea (1944) and
Peleliu Landing (1945). Lea's lifelong
friend Carl Hertzog, a book designer, printed both books as well as Lea's
Bullfight Manual for Spectators (1949).
After the war, Lea began to write fiction, including
The Brave Bulls (1949),
The Wonderful Country (1952),
The Primal Yoke (1960), and
The Hands of Cantú (1964).
The Brave Bulls won the Carr P. Collins
Award of the Texas Institute of Letters for best book by a Texan, and
The Hands of Cantú won the Texas
Institute's Jesse Jones Award for the best work of fiction by a Texan. Both
The Brave Bulls and
The Wonderful Country were produced as
motion pictures. Lea continued to write non-fiction, including the two-volume
The King Ranch (1957),
A Picture Gallery (1968), and an account of
King Ranch operations in Australia,
In the Crucible of the Sun (1974).
As an artist, Lea was commissioned by
Life magazine in 1946 to paint a series of
canvases depicting Western cattle, which
Life presented to the Dallas Museum of Fine
Arts. In 1953, the University of Texas Press published
Tom Lea: a Portfolio of Six Paintings with an
Introduction by J. Frank Dobie. Lea's first large exhibition was
mounted in 1961 at the Fort Worth Art Center. Lea has also had exhibitions at
the El Paso Museum of Art and the Institute of Texan Cultures in San
Antonio.
Tom Lea died in 2001 in El Paso.
Scope and Contents
The Tom Lea Collection consists of typescript and holograph manuscripts,
printed books and pamphlets, prospectuses, photographs, galleys, page proofs,
pasteups, mockups, layouts, drawings, transparencies, dust jackets, postcards,
correspondence, printed advertisements, invitations, clippings, newspapers,
programs, tickets, and a menu. The collection is arranged in two series: I.
Fiction (1927-1964, bulk 1949-1964; 2 boxes), and II. Non-Fiction (1889-1974,
bulk 1937-1974; 3 boxes). The materials are arranged alphabetically by title
within each series.
The Fiction series includes material relating to
The Brave Bulls, The Hands of Cantú, The Primal
Yoke, and
The Wonderful Country. The Brave Bulls
includes typed and holograph notes and a typed and holograph biography
of the fictional bullfighter Luis Bello Garcia. The bulk consists of background
material, including typescripts of Spanish-language bullfighting articles, a
typescript titled
The Land of Gold, a guidebook, a typescript
article and notes on the Spanish bullfighter Manolete, photographs and other
images of bullfighters, a photograph and other images of the Virgin Mary,
correspondence, a pamphlet titled
Cantares Flamencos, programs, tickets,
advertisements, and invitations.
The Hands of Cantú material consists of
notes, a drawing, galleys, a typescript printer's copy, incomplete page proofs,
a pasteup and proof of the dust jacket, and correspondence.
The Primal Yoke material includes galleys, a
page proof, proofs and pasteups of chapter headings, and a mockup of the dust
jacket.
The Wonderful Country is represented by
notes, a point outline by Bob Parrish, a story outline, shot sequences, a
typescript of the screenplay by Maurice Zimm, typescripts of the screenplay by
Tom Lea, correspondence, and a map drawn by Tom Lea.
The Non-Fiction series includes material relating to the
Bullfight Manual for Spectators, the
Calendar of Twelve Travelers through the Pass of the
North, the
Exhibition of Preliminary Drawings for a Mural in
the Lobby of the United States Court House, El Paso, Texas by Tom Lea,
In the Crucible of the Sun,
The King Ranch,
Peleliu Landing,
A Picture Gallery, and
Westward Bound: a Hundred Years Ago. The
material for the
Bullfight Manual includes a pasteup, page
proofs, a proof copy, and both small and large format printed copies. The
Calendar includes a printed sheet, a
holograph draft of
El Paso del Norte, a typescript, a page
proof, a proof of the illustration
Don Diego de Vargas, the Warrior, and a
menu. The
Exhibition of Preliminary Drawings includes
the exhibition catalog and correspondence. For
In the Crucible of the Sun, there are a
corrected typescript, typescript photocopies, typescript captions for the
illustrations, two layouts, page proofs, an unbound proof copy, a sketchbook,
photographic transparencies, an illustration layout, proofs of illustrations,
and correspondence.
The King Ranch includes a typescript with
chapters 1 and 2 in page proof, instructions to the printer, typed footnotes,
incomplete page proofs, a prospectus, and correspondence. The
Peleliu Landing material consists of two
notebooks, U. S. Navy and U. S. S. Ormsby documents, typescripts of a poem and
songs written by marines and sailors, photocopies of drawings, photographic
negatives, Japanese postcards, military identification cards, an aerial
photograph of Peleliu, and correspondence.
A Picture Gallery consists of lists of
illustrations for
Life and the
Saturday Evening Post, laid in a binding.
Westward Bound is represented by page proofs
and correspondence. In addition, there is a proof copy of a program titled
Fort Bliss One-hundredth Anniversary
1848-1948with pageant and parade instructions and correspondence; a
typescript essay,
Homer Lea, as well as clippings; a
typescript titled
A Report from the Advisory Commission on Church Art
and Ornamentation [by the] Diocese of New Mexico and Southwest Texas
and correspondence; a leaflet titled
Art and Religion: a Symposium on the New
Encounter; and a pamphlet titled
Stained Glass Designs of McKee Chapel in the Church
of Saint Clement, including a program from the church, drawings of the
window designs, and a pasteup for the pamphlet.
The correspondence is primarily professional in nature, concerning
textual suggestions from colleagues and details of publication. The
correspondence from Carl Hertzog touches on the design and production of the
books on which he and Lea collaborated. The correspondence from Robert Parrish
suggests improvements to the screenplay
The Wonderful Country.
Some of the material in the collection was separated by format upon
receipt by the HRHRC. Please consult the following HRHRC collections for
further Tom Lea materials: Art, Books, Personal Effects, and Vertical File. In
addition, further Tom Lea materials may be found in the card catalog under the
following collections: J. Frank Dobie, Harper's, Alfred A. Knopf, Tom Lea, and
Carl Sandburg.