James Taylor Harwood was this state's first world-famous artist.
He was the first Utahn to exhibit in the prestigious French Salon, with a painting accepted for the 1892 show. He created hundreds of beautiful oil paintings, watercolors and color etchings. His fame grew throughout a long career, which ended with his death in 1940 at age 80.
He was recently celebrated in retrospectives and new books. Many art lovers revere Harwood as a painter.
But what few knew _ until now _ is that he was also a photographer.
In fact, J.T. Harwood sometimes used photography as a sort of sketchbook, painting almost directly from photos that he took. Working at times in the tradition of the impressionists, who believed in capturing the passing moment, he did that precisely _ capturing the instant with the snap of a shutter.
The discovery of Harwood's photography was a lucky accident.
Last Christmas, I went browsing through Salt Lake antique stores for gifts. On the floor of one shop lay an old file drawer, made to hold 4-by-5-inch note cards. Labeled "OLD Neg," it was filled with original 4-by-5-inch negatives. There was no other identification.
The antique dealer said the drawer had remained in his back room for years. Not long ago, he said, another dealer helped him clean out some things and she moved it to the front of his shop.
He was willing to sell it, and I purchased the entire set. There's little market for old negatives, and the price _ around $90 for the lot _ was fairly expensive.
There turned out to be 140 photographs, about 90 of them glass-plate negatives of the type taken around the turn of the century. Others were on nitrate film, dating from about the 'teens to the 1930s.
Obviously the photographer had a sharp eye for composition. The studies were carefully balanced views _ closeups of forest floors with leaves, shore scenes, a mountain looming across a field, Liberty Park, snowy days, waterfalls, the interior of an artist's studio with statues and paintings on easels, quiet family pictures taken at home at Christmas, chickens, a calf, flower arrangements. Several views seem to be of Liberty Park. One is certainly Liberty Park _ a picture of the Chase Mill seen across a field of snow and the pond. In 1907 and 1908, Harwood made an oil painting and 24 watercolors of Liberty Park, capturing the park's feelings in all seasons.
It would be interesting to compare some of these paintings with the photographs.
Many of the negatives offer stunning views of France _ boats in the Seine, Paris streets, flower sellers, print displays, pedestrians, carriages passing.
Then there were photographs of paintings, 25 altogether, often still on the easel. All were signed "J.T. Harwood."
It was obvious that these were Harwood's photographs. He must have recorded paintings as he finished them, so he would have a rec-ord in case they were sold.
Some of these paintings seem not to be listed in compilations of Harwood's works. And at least one was repainted, and the details changed, after it was photographed.
That was a picture of Jesus Christ by the seashore, "Come Ye After Me," in a frame that Harwood apparently built himself. The molding of the frame has symbols from the life of Jesus _ the star that announced his birth, the crown of thorns, fish in a net, an Easter lily.
"Come Ye After Me" placed first in a Julian competition in the 1904 Salon, according to "James Taylor Harwood, 1860-1940," by Will South, published in 1987 by the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah.
South's book is an admirable, although short, biography of Harwood; it publishes paintings from a retrospective exhibition that showed in 1987 and 1988 in the Springville Museum of Art, Utah Museum of Fine Arts and Braithwaite Gallery at Southern Utah State College, Springville.
The photograph of "Come Ye After Me" raises the question of how many versions Harwood painted of this subject.
The earliest must be from 1903 or 1904, according to Harwood's own account; the picture in the negative seems to be dated 1909; it differs in some particulars from one by Harwood presently on display in the LDS Church History Museum, which is dated in the 1920s.
Was this one painting, repainted and changed over the years, or were there three?
A pair of negatives show a blind model posing for another painting on which Harwood lavished much effort during his family's stay in Paris in 1903, "Adoration of Ages." The model was known as the "Blind Christ," because he often posed for artists making religious paintings of Jesus.
In one of the photos, the model stands alone, in the position and garments as shown in the "Adoration" painting. In the other, a little girl poses with the model, looking up at him while the man maintains the pose. In the finished work, the little girl is also in the pose she maintained for the photo.
One of the most interesting finds was a photograph of the same small girl blowing bubbles. It turned out to be, indisputably, the photograph from which Harwood painted one of his best-known masterpieces, "Blowing Soap Bubbles," in 1903.
According to his autobiography, "A Basket of Chips," the girl is his daughter, Ruth, who was born in 1896 and died in 1958.
This painting, first exhibited at the French Salon of 1903 and shown this year at the Art Barn, is now in the permanent collection of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah.
What startled one art historian is that the painting is a nearly exact copy of the original photograph of Ruth Harwood. The main differences are that in the painting, Harwood added the girl's left arm and hand, which were hidden beside her when he took the picture, and her expression is more absorbed and her hair more casual in the photo.
A checklist of Harwood works, published with his autobiography, "A Basket of Chips," 1985, University of Utah Libraries, describes a painting called "The Fireplace" or "The Fireplace in the Second Salt Lake Studio," with the notation that it was painted between 1905 and 1920. During that period, the Harwood family lived at 666 E. 11th South, according to an old city directory.
The checklist says the oil painting shows a large hearth, with a spinning wheel in the foreground and other props that appear in many Harwood paintings. Part of "Blowing Soap Bubbles" can be seen over the mantle, says the checklist.
In the photograph, first published with this article, nearly every detail matches the description except that the spinning wheel is shown more in the middleground of the photo than the foreground.
The photo is so clear that other Harwood paintings on the wall are easily identifiable, including the luminously lovely "Preparation for Dinner," an 1891 oil that is also at the university museum. This is the painting that was exhibited in the 1891 Salon.
Two positive transparencies on glass, included in the collection, give a hint about Harwood's technique.
The artist would take a photo of a scene that appealed to him. Then he could copy it by making a contact print on negative plate stock, creating a positive on glass. Finally, he could easily project the positive onto paper or canvas, and use it to sketch the outlines of a painting.
Most of the Harwood negatives are in good condition, although a few are scratched or faded. Some are difficult to print because they are uneven in contrast.
The photographs would probably make an interesting exhibit or catalog, should an institution care to show off a previously unknown side of Harwood's talent in the graphic arts.
By the time of his death, Harwood was not only a noted artist but a beloved art teacher at the University of Utah. He was called "the dean of Utah painters."
Maybe now he can take his place in the public mind as a remarkable photographer, too.