Born in San Leandro, California, Edward Borein became one of the most popular artists of western scene painting, equally adept at ink drawing, watercolor, and etching.

He was raised in San Leandro, a western cow town, in a family where his father was a county politician. Edward had many childhood memories of herded cattle and their cowboys, which he began sketching at the age of five. He was educated in the Oakland, California schools, and at the age of 17 began working on a ranch near Oakland and then drifted and sketched as a working cowboy throughout the Southwest, Mexico, and Guatemala.

It was said that he practiced his art on anything he could find from bunkhouse walls to scraps of paper. At a...