Visit the Tom Lea Trail

Click on the image for a closer view!

Tom Lea (1907-2001) was a genius of the twentieth century whose extraordinary gifts as a muralist, illustrator, war correspondent, portraitist, novelist, historian and easel painter brought fame to himself and to Texas.

Our friends at the Tom Lea Institute in El Paso have put together "trail" of sites based on the life and work of Tom Lea. From the Tom Lea Institute's webpage:

"Tom Lea’s murals of the 1930s express the history and character of the Southwest on walls of public buildings from Washington, D.C. to Dallas, Texas, and are arguably the finest of the period. As an eye-witness artist correspondent for Life Magazine during World War II, Tom Lea traveled over 100,000 miles to record U.S. and Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen and their machines waging war worldwide. He wrote and illustrated bestselling novels—The Brave Bulls and The Wonderful Country—that were adapted into Hollywood movies, and a dozen other books about subjects as diverse as mountaineering in Wyoming, horse training in 16th century New Spain, and the history of the mammoth King Ranch. His paintings depict remote and exotic places from Ecuador to China, but primarily capture subjects found near his home on the border between Mexico and Texas."


Click HERE to view the Institute's page on the Trail...
 
There are sites in El Paso, Waco, Odessa, Seymour, Dallas, College Station, Galveston, Hebronville, Kingsville, Fredericksburg and Austin; and in New Mexico there are sites in Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Mesilla.

At the El Paso Museum of History,
The Arrival of the First Train in El Paso, 1881, 1956
Pen & Ink, 18 ½ x 15 ¾ inches
Gift of Pat & Henry Taylor

At the Larry Durham Center, UTEP
The Turning Point, 1966
Oil on canvas, 31 x 42 inches

At the El Paso Public Library,
Southwest, mural, 1956.
Oil on canvas, 5 ½ x 20 feet