Artist William Lester was born in Graham, Texas, in 1910. He was an artist for the Civilian Conservation Corps camp near Paladuro Canyon, Texas and near Fort Sill, Oklahoma in the mid 1930s, and taught at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts School at the beginning of the 1940s. He joined the faculty of the University of Texas Department of Art in 1942, and was Chairman from 1952-1954. He retired from UT as Professor Emeritus in 1972. William Lester died in 1991. His art was published by the Laguna Gloria Art Museum in 1993 in Companions in time: the paintings of William Lester and Everett Spruce.