Pair of Hernando Villa Sailors (Sailor at the Helm and Sailor with Pipe) Mixed Media on Paper Framed I found each of these separately years apart and reframed them as a pair. Large, bold and sticking. Great for any nautical collection! A commercial artist and painter, Hernando Villa had a specialty that was the Old West--landscape, Southwest Indians, and missions, which he did in oil, watercolor, pastel and charcoal. But his most famous work is "The Chief," emblem of the Santa Fe Railroad. He also did murals including one for the New Rialto Theater in Phoenix, Arizona. Villa was born in Los Angeles, California, and was raised in a cultured Mexican family from Baja, California. His mother was a singer and the father was an artist with a studio on the Plaza. He studied locally with Louise Garden-MacLeod at the School of Art and Design and then after studying in Germany and England, taught two years at the School of Art. By 1906, he was working as a commercial artist in Los Angeles where for forty years, he worked as an illustrator for the Santa Fe Railroad. Hernando Villa (1881-1952)...Born: Los Angeles, CA Studied: Los Angeles School of Art and Design. Hernando Villa was born, raised, and spent most of his life in Los Angeles. He worked as a commercial artist and sold easel paintings through local galleries. Many of his commercial works done for the Santa Fe Railroad, Southern Pacific Railroad and Southern California magazine publications were painted with watercolors. Other works depicting missions and landscape subjects were watercolors, mixed with ink and pastels. Villa also produced many oil paintings, some of which were reproduced and sold as art prints in the 1930s.