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Thomas Calloway "Tom" Lea, III (July 11, 1907 – January 29, 2001) was a noted American muralist, illustrator, artist, war correspondent, novelist, and historian. The bulk of his art and literary works were about Texas, north-central Mexico, and his World War II experience in the South Pacific and Asia. Two of his most popular novels, ''The Brave Bulls'' and the ''The Wonderful Country'', are widely considered to be classics of southwestern American literature. ==Biography== Lea was born in El Paso, Texas, to Thomas Calloway Lea, Jr. (a prominent attorney), and the former Zola May Utt. From 1915 to 1917, his father was mayor of El Paso. As mayor, Tom, Jr., made a public declaration that he would arrest Pancho Villa, after Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, if Villa dared enter El Paso. Villa then responded by offering a thousand pesos gold bounty on Lea. For six months Tom, III., and his brother, Joe, had to have a police escort to and from school, and there was a 24-hour guard on the house.〔Antone, Evan Haywood. - (Lea, Thomas Calloway Jr. ) - ''Handbook of Texas''. - Texas State Historical Association. - Retrieved: 2008-07-05〕〔Lea, - ''Tom Lea, An Oral History'', - p.7.〕 He graduated from El Paso High School in 1924. From 1924 to 1926 he attended the Art Institute of Chicago and then apprenticed and assisted John W. Norton, a Chicago muralist, from 1927 to 1932.〔(MS 476: Tom Lea papers ). - University Library. - University of Texas at El Paso. - Retrieved: 2008-07-04〕 In 1927, he wed Nancy June Taylor, a fellow art student. In 1930 Norton suggested that Tom take an art tour of Europe to study the masters. He and Nancy went to Paris and saw an exhibit of Eugène Delacroix at the Louvre, and Delacroix was his "favorite". Next they traveled to Florence, Orvieto, Rome, Capri. Then, after a four-month tour, it was back to Le Havre to catch the SS ''Ile de France''.〔Lea, - ''Tom Lea, An Oral History'', - p.34-38.〕 After the tour of Italy they moved to Santa Fe to be with other artists and be in the Southwest. When Nancy became ill (a botched appendectomy) they moved to El Paso, and Lea found work from the Federal Art Project (FAP) for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which during the Great Depression hired artists, and in Lea's case to paint murals in government buildings.〔J. Tillapaugh, University of Texas of the Permian Basin, "The Popular Culture Heritage of New Deal Muralists Peter Hurd and Tom Lea in West Texas", West Texas Historical Association, annual meeting in Fort Worth, Texas, February 27, 2010〕 Lea also won the United States Department of the Treasury competition for a mural commission in the United State Post Office Department Building (now the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building) in Washington, D.C., called ''The Nesters''. His other murals included the post offices in Odessa, Texas (''Stampede''), Pleasant Hill, Missouri (''Back Home, April 1865''), and Seymour, Texas (''Comanches''). In 1936, his wife (in April), grandmother (in June), and his mother (in December), all died in that year.〔Lea, - ''Tom Lea, An Oral History'', - p.51.〕 In 1937 he started doing illustration work, and this led to a partnership with a friend of his father, author J. Frank Dobie. Dobie wrote about the rough life of settling the Texas frontier and Lea's illustrations are mostly of cowboys and the wild Texas landscapes.〔 While painting a mural in El Paso Federal Courthouse (''Pass of the North''), he met and married his second wife, Sarah Catherine Beane (née Dighton), in July 1938. Sarah had come from Monticello, Illinois, to El Paso to visit friends. Sarah had a son, James (Jim), from a previous marriage whom Lea adopted. That same year his started his lifelong partnership with Carl Hertzog (Jean Carl Hertzog Sr.), an El Paso book designer and typographer. 1937–1938 would prove to be the antithesis of 1936, providing Lea with three lifelong partners and friends.〔Lea, - ''Tom Lea, An Oral History'', - p.52,57,61.〕 In 1940 he applied for and won Rosenwald Fellowship, but by the end of the summer of 1941, he got a telegram from ''LIFE'' asking him to go to sea with the United States Navy on a North Atlantic Patrol. In the fall of 1941, he decided to paint for ''LIFE'' as war artist and correspondent aboard a destroyer.〔Lea, - ''Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery'', - p.45-46.〕 He traveled all over the world with the United States military from 1941 to 1945. This included: China, Great Britain, Italy, India, North Africa, North Atlantic, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific. He went on deployment with the aircraft carrier USS ''Hornet'' in the Pacific Ocean in 1942, where he met the famous Army Air Corps pilot Jimmy Doolittle. Lea was on board the ''Hornet'' (September 15, 1942) when the USS ''Wasp'' was sunk by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine.〔Lea, - ''Tom Lea, A Picture Gallery'', - p.64.〕 He painted several pictures of the sinking of the ''Wasp''. In 1943, during his visit to China, he met Theodore H. White, and he painted the portraits of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong Mei-ling; the head of the "Flying Tigers", and General Claire Lee Chennault.〔 But, it was his time in the western Pacific in 1944 as an "embedded" reporter with the United States 1st Marine Division during the invasion of the tiny island of Peleliu that he would really make a name for himself among the readers of ''LIFE''. “My work there consisted of trying to keep from getting killed and trying to memorize what I saw and felt,” Lea says.〔Steinberg, Rafael. - "World War II: Island Fighting". - Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Inc. - 1998.〕 His vivid, realistic, images of the beach landing, and Battle of Peleliu, would impact both readers and himself. ''The Price'' and ''That 2,000 Yard Stare'' would become among his most famous works.〔 (1,794 Americans died in a two-month period it what many call the war's most controversial battle, due to its questionable strategic value and high death toll.〔Moody, Sid. - "1,794 Americans Died For An Unneeded Pacific Island". - Associated Press. - (c/o ''Seattle Times''). - September 11, 1994. - Retrieved: 2008-07-04〕〔Zeiler, Thomas W., (2004). - ''Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, And The End of World War II''. - Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc. - p.105. ISBN 978-0-8420-2990-2〕) In 1947 Lea finished a graphite sketch on kraft paper of his wife called ''Study for Sarah in the Summertime''. He had started the sketch two years earlier, about six months after he got home from the war. The life size work (71" × 30¼") was based on a photograph, taken of Sarah in the backyard of their home at 1520 Raynolds Boulevard in El Paso, that he had carried in his wallet throughout the war. An oil painting, ''Sarah in the Summertime'' (67" × 32"), was then done from the sketch. He spent longer on this combined work than any other painting.〔〔Lea, - ''Tom Lea, An Oral History'', - p.97.〕 After finishing his last novel, ''The Hands of Cantu'' (an account of horse training in 16th-century Nueva Viscaya) in 1964, Lea traveled to Boston to meet with his publishers, Little, Brown and Company. He told them that he wasn't interested in another novel, so they suggested a book about his pictures. This 1968 work, ''A Picture Gallery'', was his "autobiography", writing of why and when he did his paintings. Working on ''A Picture Gallery'' would lead him to once again focus on painting and turn away from working on literature.〔Lea, - ''Tom Lea, An Oral History'', - pp.121–122.〕 Right before finishing this work, Baylor University paid tribute to his writing by bestowing him, and his long-time friend Carl Hertzog, with an honorary doctorate's in literature.〔"Round 1". - ''TIME''. - June 09, 1967. - Retrieved: 2008-07-07〕〔(Hertzog, Jean Carl, Sr. ). - ''Handbook of Texas''. - Texas State Historical Association. - Retrieved: 2008-07-07〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Thomas C. Lea III」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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