The Art of War
The paintings of Tom Lea, Life magazine's artist-correspondent during World War II.
- By Rebecca Maksel
- AirSpaceMag.com, February 06, 2009
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Tom Lea
“The muralist, painter, and author Tom Lea,” reported the New York Times in 2000, “is probably the only person, dead or alive, who can say he has been threatened by Pancho Villa, interrupted by Chiang Kai-shek, and regaled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Oddly enough, Mr. Lea was mostly forgotten until he was quoted this month by Gov. George W. Bush [in his speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination for president].”
In 1941, Texas-born artist Tom Lea received a telegram from Life magazine offering an assignment as a war “artist-correspondent” aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer in the North Atlantic. Lea accepted, and spent the next four years—along with six other artists—painting the lives of men at war. Texas A&M University Press has recently published a lavishly illustrated book documenting those years titled The Two Thousand Yard Stare: Tom Lea’s World War II (2008, edited by Brendan M. Greeley Jr.).
Lea’s first assignment was to paint four portraits of soldiers training for war at Fort Sam Houston and Randolph Field. One of the men was aviation cadet Bill Kelly, shown here in the cockpit of his basic trainer. Lea noted that Kelly “wouldn’t even smoke or drink coffee, much less take a snort for fear it would disturb his flying.”
Click on the thumbnails at right to see more images from the book.
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Comments (3)
What an excellent well written account of the life and works of Tom Lea who is an underappreciated artist and writer of the World War II era.
Posted by Margaret Kurtin on February 15,2009 | 01:53 PM
The pictures and the captions tell us a lot about the man himself. A worthy representative I think, of a very worthy generation.
Posted by Mike Houlding on August 26,2009 | 11:05 PM