Good & Authentic

Texans swarming into Dallas for the State Fair last week found cattle on the walls as well as in the stalls. The Dallas Museum of Fine Arts was featuring a brand-new show of eleven cattle paintings by Texas' Tom Lea, a report-in-oils skillful and observant enough to rival the works of such oldtime Southwesterners as Charles Russell and Frederic Remington.

Lea, 43, a wiry El Pasoan who once went in for portraiture and commercial art, developed his reporter's skill on a rugged assignment. As an artist-correspondent he covered World War II for LIFE, painted the North Atlantic patrol, later moved to the Pacific and landed with the Marines on Peleliu. After the war LIFE commissioned the cattle pictures, last week presented them to the Dallas museum.

A prodigious researcher, Lea had dipped into Mexico to learn about the Spanish origins of U.S. cattle. He came back with some dramatic bullfight sketches and material for a fine first novel, The Brave Bulls (TIME, April 25, 1949). Later, he visited Southwestern ranches and Midwestern stock farms, spent a solid week on the killing floor at Swift & Co.'s Chicago stockyards. The resulting pictures struck Texans as not only good but mighty authentic. Looking at a Lea branding scene last week, one grizzled cattleman remarked: "You can smell the smoke from the burned hair."

A hit of the show was the portrait of Oklahoma Governor Roy Turner's great Hereford bull, the late Hazford Rupert 81st, which sired $1,000,000 worth of calves. He was, Lea recalled, "a most distinguished, gentlemanly and cordial old bull. He tipped the scales at 1,850 pounds, liked to have his back scratched, and was gentle as a house dog . . . He stood for his portrait not only with dignity but with the skill of an experienced and much interviewed public figure. He was pleasanter and far more interesting than many human portrait subjects I have had."

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