[Spanish soldier in armor with horse; exploring Southwestern U.S.]

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This photograph records a painting, not a live scene: a mural by Tom Lea, the El Paso artist, showing a Spanish soldier in armor beside his horse, a figure from the early exploration of the Southwest. The work was made for the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal agency that employed artists during the 1930s to decorate public buildings. Its caption card gives no date, and the catalog data is unverified, so the exact year is uncertain. Still, the image shows how depression-era muralists often turned the region's Spanish colonial past into a public story of discovery and settlement.

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