She graduated from Rockford College in 1927 and studied with the American Impressionist and Ashcan School painter Ernest Lawson at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1929.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lee undertook several commissions for Life magazine, including articles and illustrations on travel to such places as North Africa, Mexico, and Cuba.

She taught at Michigan State University and was invited to attend Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center as a guest artist.

[2] To a generation exhausted with the trials of economic hard times, the return to a simpler past became more desirable as the search for a new national identity continued.

[8] Yet Josephine Logan, the donor of the prize, condemned the work's broad, exaggerated style and founded the conservative Society for Sanity in Art movement in response.

[8] This controversy only brought Lee fame, and Thanksgiving has been recognized as one of the most popular nostalgic views of this American ritual.