24 x 30, signed on reverse: Children's Playground, WM Lester 1949. "William Lester is known as one of the most important and influential Texas modernist painters. A native of Graham, TX, Lester moved to Dallas in 1924 where his painting studies excelled while he painted alongside Alexandre Hogue under the tutelage Thomas Stell and Olin Travis at Travis’s Dallas Art Institute. After the start of his professional career as a draftsman at the Dallas Power and Light Company, working alongside Charles Bowling; at the same time as an artist at the Civilian Conservation Corps near Palo Duro Canyo; he went on to teach at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts until 1942.Lester’s more influential decades began in the 1940’s when he was hired by the University of Texas, Austin to teach in the art department. His style evolved while he was there along side fellow art professors Everett Spruce, Loren Mozley, Seymour Fogel and sculptor Charles Umlauf to name a few. Lester’s style is most likened to his good friend and painter, Everett Spruce. Katie Robinson Edwards quotes Mr. Lester and his feeling on the evolution of his painting while at UT: “My color needed strength, more visual force, more drama. I wanted to be sure also that the shapes gained maximum strength.” These forceful techniques with his use of lines, defined shapes punctured with bold colors certainly evoke the strength, force and drama that he wanted to portray in each of these paintings in lots 200 through 204. Edwards goes on to describe Lester’s influential figurative work as “depicted in a heavy manner that makes them as solid as rocks, forecast the work of later artists such as David Bates.” Lester remained at UT until his retirement in 1972. During this time he was the chairman of the art department from 1952-54. Lester’s work continues to be admired and acknowledged in the following permanent collections: Dallas Museum of Art, Jack S Blanton Museum of Art, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Torch Collection, the Witte Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art to name a few. "