Donald Teague was a leading illustrator of western subjects for the Saturday Evening Post, Donald Teague became a founding member of the National Academy of Western Art in 1973. His pseudonymn was "Edwin Dawes", a name he used when he did illustrations for Colliers magazine because that publication and the Post were great rivals, and he did not want to appear to be serving both of them.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, he studied with George Bridgman and Frank DuMond at the Art Students League in New York and with Norman Wilkinson in London. Then Teague returned to the Art Students League where Dean Cornwell encouraged him to go into illustration.

In 1938, Teague made a risky move away from New York, the source of his illustration assignments, to California, but the publishers sought him out there. He first lived in Encino, and then from 1949 settled in Carmel.

In 1948, he was elected a National Academician and in 1958, became a full-time fine artist. In 1953 and 1954, he earned major awards from the American Watercolor Society, the first to win two awards in succession.

His work is in numerous collections including the Frye Museum in Seattle; Mills College in Oakland and the Cowboy Hall of Fame.