Utah artists have been enchanted by the "colors of the land" for more than a century-and-a-half.
Our state has a landscape-art tradition that is both deep-rooted and exciting, said Richard G. Oman, art historian and a senior curator at the Museum of Church History and Art.
If you look at the history of art here, one of the first things you notice, Oman said, "is that the art tradition is much older than you would expect. That's because we didn't have to raise our early artists from scratch."
With normal patterns of emigration and settlement, people would move to the edge of the frontier to establish farms. By the time the next generation came along, all the nearby land would be taken up, so if they wanted to have a farm — as most did, in those days — they would leapfrog over existing settlements to the edge of the frontier. And the process would start again.
"On the frontier, you would have farmers," said Oman. "And you would have blacksmiths and millers. But you'd have to wait a long time to get painters and artists."
The Mormon experience differed, in that it drew emigrants from settled areas in the East as well as from Europe. "They arrived with a whole set of skills. That's why we could have people living in log cabins, and at the same time building the Salt Lake Temple."
That not only meant that Utah art got a half-century jump over most states in the West, said Oman, it also meant early artists brought native influences with them. Most of Utah's early painters were from Scandinavia and Britain, and in their work, you see evidence of their native thought and character.
Go back to mid-19th century Europe, said Oman, and you see the rise of nationalism. You see Germany starting to come together under Bismarck. By the 1870s, it is strong enough to take on France. "The Danes start to worry. They look at the rise of military, economic and cultural power, and think 'we could be toast.' " So they begin to foster their own national and cultural identity. "Instead of sending their best artists to Italy to study, they now encourage them to stay home and paint local landscapes. Danish farms don't look like German farms. Danish peasants dress differently. These scenes reinforce a sense of national identity."
When Danes join the LDS Church and come to Utah, he said, they bring that with them. You see it in works by D.A. Weggeland and C.C.A. Christensen, for example, in the scenes of the handcart trail and views of Salt Lake City. "Most Scandinavian artists depicted early Utah Mormon history, and its man-made environment, such as farms, towns and houses."
Then you look at works by the British converts, and you see something entirely different, he said. You see sweeping and romanticized landscapes. "I used to look at those paintings and think, 'What is Mormon about that?' " said Oman. "How come their religious faith was not shown in the artwork? And then I had an epiphany."
He had been reading 19th-century poetry — as found in hymn books. "And I realized that all the nature-type hymns were written by the Brits. For example, 'Oh, Ye Mountains High' was written by Charles W. Penrose in London before he even got here. So why were they so focused on landscape?"
Look at British literary history of the time, he said, and you find the Romantics, like Wordsworth and Coleridge. "They hear the birds sing; they find God in the clouds."
They are a contrast to Charles Dickens, who wrote about the slums, the industrial revolution, the hard times. "You could be a miner, going to work before sun-up and coming home late and night, and go weeks without even seeing the sun. The Romantic movement to nature was a reaction against that."
It was also a time when Britain was at its height militarily. "Its navy ruled the seas; London was the financial capital of the world. Those are not the kind of things that make for great humility. So the Romantic focus on nature was also a check on too much pride. 'If you think you're big stuff, check out the mountains and the ocean.' Nature became a stand-in for God. In the power and majesty of nature, you see God."
And those are the elements in the work of early artists from Britain, such as Alfred Lambourne and George Beard. You look at Beard's painting of the Uintas, and you see the dramatic proportions, said Oman, "and it's not because he is stupid, or because he doesn't know what the mountains really look like, but because he tried to tell how he feels and what it means. Emotion and meaning are an important part of the Romantic movement."
Late in the 19th century, he said, you come to the French influence. When the Salt Lake Temple was almost completed, the church sent artists to France to study. The Impressionist movement was going strong, and those painters came away with a quiet, introspective, thoughtful approach.
You look at John Hafen's painting of Brighton, for example, "and there are no mountains; just forest. This is not the thunder from Mount Sinai; this is the subtle, small voice," said Oman. Landscapes from this period "are imbued with soft, quiet, contemplative feelings."
Over the next 20 years, those painters became the art teachers, and Paris was the model. But when World War I broke out, they had to stop going to Europe. "So they went to New York. And interesting things were happening in New York. We were beginning to create our own sense of identity as a nation. We began to look at what it means to be an American rather than a European. The European focus was on the upper class and leisure; Americans focused on working, on plowing, on making work a sacred thing."
The landscape and the experience of the West again took on mythic proportions in the works of artists such as Mabel Pearl Frazer, Mahonri Young and Minerva Teichert.
By mid-century, LeConte Stewart furthered the idea of becoming one with the land. "You look at his landscapes and you see the same colors used for the man-made and the natural parts. He loved to paint the seasons in soft, mellow colors. And throughout, there's a unity of people and the land. Stewart had an incredible impact on the landscape tradition in Utah."
One other factor enters into the strength and popularity of that tradition, said Oman. And that is the fact that "we live amidst the most spectacular landscape on the planet. I've hiked in the Himalayas. You go to the Alpine Loop in American Fork Canyon, and it doesn't suffer by comparison. You take the incredible mountains, the vastness of the desert, the totally different world of the canyons, and then add the charming rural Mormon landscape of places like Sanpete County, and where else in the world do you get all that?"
For the landscape artist, Utah has "greater variety than any place on the planet. It's the happy-hunting ground for painters."
And for viewers, too, there is something that harkens back to the Romantic movement in England. "As we become increasingly urbanized, we seek the respite from that. And we do it with art. If you can't be out in the mountains, you can bring them to you. If you grew up on a farm or your great-grandfather had a farm, you can have a painting of a farm in your apartment or condo."
Art, he said, is so much more than line, form, color and texture. "Those are the tools the artists use to give it zing, to celebrate beauty, but art is also about ideas and content. And Utah landscapes are drenched in content."
So, he said, it's not surprising that the landscape tradition here is incredibly popular. "We tend to take it for granted. But it's not a given. You don't get the variety we have here anywhere else."
E-mail: carma@desnews.com