During the Great Depression, he considered himself fortunate to paint murals for the federal Works Progress Administration that decorated U.S. Combined, his paintings and his words are among the most potent testimonials about the suffering of ordinary men to emerge from the war.Ī native of El Paso, Texas, Lea studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then traveled to Paris where he fell in love with the work of the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix. He was also a talented writer whose dispatches were frequently published alongside his artwork. I reported in pictures what I saw with my own two eyes, wide open,” Lea stated.
“I did not report hearsay I did not imagine, or fake, or improvise I did not cuddle up with personal emotion, moral notion, or political opinion about War with a capital W. Yet the editors at Life knew Lea’s paintings captured something the camera lens could miss: his affinity for the men he covered, combined with a relentless pursuit of accuracy. Thomas Calloway Lea III (1907-2001) covered the war for Life magazine, a publication that prided itself on being a photographer’s journal. Gaze into the eyes of the warriors portrayed by World War II combat artist Tom Lea and you know that his subjects have seen hell. I t’s been said that if you look into an infantryman’s eyes you can tell how much war he has seen. “I reported in pictures what I saw with my own two eyes, wide open.”
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