LOT DETAILS

Materials:

oil on canvas

Measurements:

20.00 in. (50.80 cm.) (height) by 30.00 in. (76.20 cm.) (width)

Markings:

signed lower left: Lewis Teel

Exhibited:

Teel was born in Clarksville and reared in El Paso, where his family moved in 1899. He started his business career as an engineer in Mexico and was afterward superintendent of the mechanical department for a Detroit manufacturer. During this time, he received training in commercial art. After his return to El Paso, he entered the automobile business and in 1927 began to paint full time. He painted in and around El Paso and Santa Fe and in Arizona and the Trans-Pecos region of Texas, including the Big Bend area. He was a resident of San Antonio in 1934 and returned to El Paso in 1937. William Hogg, a wealthy Houston oilman, once purchased Teel’s entire collection of seventeen paintings, Teel specialized in desert landscapes and pastel portraits. A columnist for the El Paso Times called him a “master in his presentation of far distances, especially notcieable in the scene of lovely quietude, far away blus shadows on the mountain, and a soft light in the foreground.” Teel died in a Long Beach, California, hospital following a short illness. Survivors include his son Lewis Woods Teel, Jr.