Robert Lougheed

Born on a farm in Massey, Ontario, Canada, Robert Lougheed landed his first illustration job with the Toronto Star when he was 19 and taking art classes at night. He moved to New York in 1935 to attend the Art Students League and studied the principles of plein air painting with Frank Vincent DuMond. The tenets Lougheed learned from DuMond would stay with him through his career, as he was always a strong believer in painting from life rather than from memory or a photograph. Lougheed found commercial success in the 1940s and 1950s creating logos like the famous red Pegasus for Mobil Oil and illustrating stories in magazines such as National Geographic and Reader’s Digest. His success allowed him to spend half of each year traveling and painting. He settled in New Mexico in the 1960s and produced landscapes of the Southwest and his native Canada. He was elected to the Cowboy Artists of America in 1967 and played an important role in the founding of the National Academy of Western Art in 1972.