LeConte Stewart: Depression Era Art

LeConte Stewart: Depression Era Art

at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah - 21 July 2011 through 15 January 2012

By Donna Poulton

Best known for the Red Rock splendors of Monument Valley and of Zion and Bryce Canyons, southern Utah has long attracted artists from around the world.

LeConte Stewart, “Postmaster General” Credit: Church History Museum 

Although LeConte Stewart (1891-1990) grew up near these iconic sites, it was actually Utah’s small towns, farms, and urban landscapes that captured his imagination from a very young age.

LeCone Stewart, “House by the Railroad” Credit: Private Collector

In a career spanning more than 75 years, Stewart created images of Utah that are simultaneously epic and intimate. He was talented at etching, lithography, and lettering, yet it is his oil paintings that have garnered the widest recognition among both collectors and museum visitors.

LeConte Stewart, “Private Car” Credit: Church History Museum

Looking back, Stewart noted that three themes dominated his landscape paintings of Utah. The first was the desert: like most Westerners, he was attracted to sage-covered plateaus and hills — scenes of endless expanse.

LeConte Stewart, “Cannery” Credit: Private Collection

LeConte Stewart, “The Victorian” Credit: Utah Museum of Fine Arts

The second theme was the scenic region that hugs the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains: wide meadows with cottonwood trees and Lombardy poplars are punctuated with such humanizing elements as barns, corrals, farmhouses, and winding lanes.

LeConte Stewart, “Home Loan” Credit: Jan and Paul Doxey 

The third theme emerged during the 15-year period when Stewart explored the effects of the Great Depression — urban and rural landscapes of trains, stores, factories, homes, and men at work in the fields.

LeConte Stewart, “Toe Hold” Credit: Springville Museum of Art

This is the largest collection of LeConte Stewart’s extraordinary work ever exhibited.  Not to be missed.

LeConte Stewart, “The Smith’s” Credit: Utah Museum of Fine Arts

LeConte Stewart, “Untitled” Credit: Private Collection

LeConte Stewart, “Death Curve” Credit: Private Collection

LeConte Stewart, “Finale” Credit: Catherine and Gibbs Smith 

Zane Grey’s Illustrators: Lillian Wilhelm Smith

By Donna Poulton

Credit: Painters of Utah's Canyons and Deserts, by Donna Poulton & Vern Swanson

Zane Grey, the famous novelist, was an avid adventurer and always on the lookout for new material for his enormously popular romantic westerns.  Grey took an expedition to Utah's Rainbow Bridge in 1913.  It was a difficult trip, taking up to five days each way, and the travel over slick rock was perilous.

Rainbow Bridge Expedition 1910. Credit: NPS.gov

Zane Grey with Guide. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Upon seeing the Bridge, Grey wrote, “I saw past the vast jutting wall that had obstructed my view.  A mile beyond, all was bright with the colors of sunset, and spanning the canyon in the graceful shape and beautiful hues of the rainbow was a magnificent natural bridge.”

Visitors Atop Rainbow Bridge. Credit: NPS.gov

Included among the group was Grey’s cousin by marriage, Lillian Wilhelm Smith (1882-1971), a gifted artist, originally from New York City.

Credit: Blue Coyote Gallery

Among the very few white women to have made the dangerous trek by horseback at that time, Smith may well be the first woman artist to have painted the famous Bridge. She was the only woman to ever work as an illustrator for Zane Grey and she went on to illustrate other books.

Oil sketch of Rainbow Bridge by Lilian Wilhelm Smith. Credit: Anthony’s Fine Art

In his book, The Rainbow Trail, Zane Grey’s character ‘Shefford’ was equally moved by the impression of moonlight on the enormous bridge:

Near at hand it [the arch] was too vast a thing for immediate comprehension.  He wanted to ponder on what had formed it—to reflect upon its meaning as to age and force of nature, yet all he could do at each moment was to see.  White stars hung along the dark curved line.  The rim of the arch seemed to shine.  The moon must be up there somewhere.  The far side of the canon was now a blank, black wall.  Over its towering rim showed a pale glow.  It brightened.  The shades in the cañon lightened then a white disk of moon peered over the dark line.  The bridge turned to silver,  and the gloomy, shadowy belt it had cast blanched and vanished.

Credit: exquisitur

Color, Form and Light: Milford Zornes Comes Home

by Donna Poulton

Horses Red Canyon by Milford Zornes. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery

From Milford Zornes by Gordon T. McClelland and Milford Zornes, Hillcrest Press, Inc.

By the time James Milford Zornes (1908-2008) moved to Utah in 1963, he had a long history of successful exhibitions, had traveled the world, was elected president of the California Watercolor Society and had established an international teaching reputation. He and his wife had not planned to move to southern Utah, but they found the property for sale while making an impromptu visit to Edith Hamlin at the home that she and Maynard Dixon had built in Mt. Carmel. This began a decades-long interest for Zornes in the investigation of new colors, forms and light.

Maynard Dixon's Cabin. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery

During the thirty years that he lived in Mt. Carmel, Zornes painted around the Zion area in every season and from every vantage point.  On 1 April - 31 July 2011, the Thunderbird Foundation for the Arts and Bingham Gallery are bringing Zorne’s work home to the Maynard Dixon property that he loved so much with a retrospective of some of his finest work; some of it painted from his own back door.

Image courtesy of Bill Anderson Art Gallery

Dixon's Front Gate by Milford Zornes. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery

Caves of Kanab Canyon by Milford Zornes. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery

Barn in Glendale by Milford Zornes. Image courtesy of Bingham Gallery