William Lewis Lester, an artist and art teacher, was the son of John Lewis and Mildred Matilda (Padgett) Lester, born on August 20, 1910, in Graham, Texas. He had nine sisters. He moved to Dallas with his family in 1924 and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School there in 1929.
He then studied at the Dallas Art Institute with Thomas M. Stell, Jr. and Olin H. Travis, associating with other young artists, including Alexander Hogue, Jerry Bywaters, Otis M. Dozier, Everett Spruce, and Perry Nichols, among others.
He was an active member of the Dallas Art League, beginning with its founding in 1932. During the Great Depression, members formed a core of artists who led the development of the Texas Regionalist style. At the time, Dallas was one of the strongest and most dynamic centers of the regional art movement in the country.
In 1938, many Dallas artists, including Lester, formed the Lone Star Printmakers. Over the next four years, they created and exhibited their lithographic prints. The impetus for these young, financially poor artists was the opportunity to explore a new medium and showcase their work without incurring the higher costs associated with packing, transporting, and insuring paintings and sculptures.
Also in 1938, Lester married Sylvia Louise Bachrach of Dallas; they were married for fifty-three years and had two children.
Lester spent two summers in the early 1930s painting at Olin Travis’ cabin in rural Arkansas. In 1934-35, he worked as a staff artist for the Civilian Conservation Corps in Palo Duro Canyon and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In the second half of the 1930s, he earned a living as a draftsman for Texas Power and Light in Dallas while continuing to paint. From 1940 to 1942, he taught at the school of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (later the Dallas Museum of Art).
Lester joined the faculty of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin in 1942 and taught there until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1972. He served as chairman of the art department from 1952 to 1954. During the summers of 1949 and 1950, he was a visiting professor at Sul Ross College in Alpine, Texas. William Lester died on November 27, 1991 in Austin.
The Dallas movement, in which Lester played a central role, reflected the clear influence of the local environment. The artists’ paintings characteristically projected an intensely subjective approach to landscapes and other objects around them within the framework of the American scene and surrealist aesthetics. Their work revealed an interest in ideas and clear forms rather than illustration. They rejected the imitation of established artistic styles, such as impressionistic interpretations of nature, and the transformation of common local subjects such as blue fields.
For a while, Lester’s subjects remained connected to the American Scene movement, but his interpretation became freer and more abstract. His paintings of natural scenes, buildings and people became very individual and gestural. Color became more vivid and central to his work, as did his emphasis on strong composition. His fascination with certain Mexican artworks, particularly the striking combinations of vibrant colors by Rufino Tamayo, influenced his own use of color from the mid-1950s onward. By the mid-1960s, many of his paintings tended toward complete abstraction.
Lester exhibited extensively and achieved considerable recognition throughout his career. He first gained national attention as one of the exhibitors at the Texas Centennial Exposition in Dallas in 1936. That same year, his work was shown at the First National Exhibition of American Art at Rockefeller Center in New York City. His paintings were also shown in other exhibitions and museums across the country, including the Pan American Exhibition in Dallas (1937), the Golden Gate Exhibition and the World’s Fair in New York (1939). His work was also shown at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (1940), the Brooklyn Museum (1941), the San Diego Fine Arts Society (1941), the Art Institute of Chicago (1942), the Denver Art Museum (1944), the Exhibition of Modern American Paintings, San Francisco (1952), the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (1955), and the Pan American Union, Washington, D.C. (1968). In addition, his work has been shown in major art museums in Texas.
Some of his major solo exhibitions were at the Passadoit Gallery in New York City (1948, 1950, 1953); the Dayton Art Institute (Ohio) (1949); the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City (1970); and numerous museums and galleries throughout Texas.
