A well-known illustrators in New York City and then a painter of Western subjects, Tom Lovell paid great attention to details in his work and, because of this, seldom completed more than a dozen major oil paintings a year.

Lovell was born in New York City and attended high school in Nutley New Jersey. As valedictorian of his class, he spoke on the "Ill Treatment of the American Indian by the U.S. Government," a harbinger of his depictions of the West. In 1931, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University in New York.

For thirty-nine years he was a freelance illustrator for many well-known magazines including Colliers, McCalls, and National Geographic. He was also known as a p...