PAINTING, PHOTOGRAPHY AND SCULPTURE
Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 11:44PM Tweet "Every object exists in two worlds. One is the tangible that we know through our senses, and another exists only in our minds." — Ed Bateman
Ed Bateman, #5, from the series Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny. Credit: Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny: The Boxed Set
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 10:49PM Tweet By Donna Poulton
Alfred E. Lambourne, Castle Gate, Price River Canyon [[Denver & Rio Grande #4], 1889, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in. Private Collection. Credit: Painters of Utah's Canyons and Deserts, by Donna Poulton & Vern Swanson At age 16, Alfred Lambourne arrived in Utah in 1866 by Wagon Train—walking the entire way. Among the Pioneer artists, he was the most colorful character. He painted backdrops for the Salt Lake Theater and his art and poetry reflected his interest in transcendetalist romanticism in vogue during the latter half of the 19th century. When Thomas Moran came to Utah, as he often did in the 1870s, his first stop was at the home of Alfred Lambourne.
Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 7:14PM Tweet By Donna Poulton
Lee Greene Richards grew up in Salt Lake City on the same city block as such noted artists as Mahonri Young, John W. Clawson, and Alma Wright. Richards was among the first group of Utah artists who went to Paris for training. He studied at the Academie Julian in 1901 and then at the Academie des Beaux-Arts; a number of his paintings were accepted to the highly regarded Paris Salon.
Lee Greene Richards (1878-1950), Big Cottonwood Stream (1932), oil on canvas, 39-1/2 x 32 in. Credit: Springville Museum of Art Lee Greene Richards trained to paint portraiture in the academic style, using tonal colors of brown, gray and black. When his portrait commissions diminished with the advent of the Great Depression, he turned to landscape work. He also worked on projects for the WPA; they can be seen in the rotunda of the Utah State Capitol. Painting landscapes allowed Richards to use broader brush strokes and the brilliant colors found in the imagery of the Wasatch mountains in autumn.
Richards studied with Utah artist James T. Harwood and once said that “I got as much from Harwood as from any teacher that I had afterwards in Paris.”
Read more about Harwood:
Friday, January 20, 2012 at 11:19PM Tweet By Donna Poulton
After his studies at the California School of Design and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Utah artist, James T. Harwood served as the chairman of the Department of Art at the University of Utah from 1923 -1931.
James T. Harwood (1860-1940), Richards Camp, Holiday Park, Weber Canyon, 1888, oil on canvas, 26 x 45 in. Credit: Springville Museum of Art“Richards' Camp, Holiday Park-Weber Canyon, is more autobiographical than any other Utah painting from [Harwood’s] pioneer period. The setting is the campground at Holiday Park that belonged to Harwood's soon-to-be in-laws. The camp activities were recorded on canvas by J. T. Harwood in July and signed on the 3rd of August 1888.”
Detail. Credit: Springville Museum of Art “The painting depicts a number of white tents nestled among tall pines in a forest clearing. Harriett's (Hattie's) father, Dr. Heber John Richards, is resting on a hammock, wearing a pith helmet and smoking a cigar. His wife and five daughters dot the scene. The mother and her two daughters are preparing food, while a son-in-law in fishing gear is on the left. Elsewhere, another daughter is reading a book, while the youngest daughter holds her doll. The most interesting aspect of the picture is the image of the artist holding an easel and paint kit, preparing to paint oil studies. He furtively peeks to his left at Hattie, who has filled a pail of water for the camp.” - Vern Swanson, Springville Museum of Art
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 10:32PM Tweet Reuben Kirkham: Pioneer Artist
Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comReuben Kirkham was a pioneer artist—part of a first generation of Utah artists whose brush strokes provide an enduring documentation of life on the fringes of civilization. Arriving in Salt Lake by mule train in 1868, Kirkham took his place among a handful of archaic and self-taught artists. The young man would devote the last eighteen years of his life to learning his craft and producing volumes of sketches and scenes for numerous theatre and opera productions, panels for his panoramas and easel works. His works express the romantic idealization of nature common in landscape paintings of the mid-nineteenth century, but also bear the stamp of his unique style and the challenging environment and vistas of the west.
Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comUntil now it was thought that only a few of his works had survived, but through diligent research and detective work, historian Donna L. Poulton has uncovered many sketches and oil paintings that further attest to Kirkham’s remarkable body of work. Many of those will be made public for the first time in this book. Several important paintings, found in lamentable condition, have now been restored and preserved by the Springville Museum of Art as a result of her important research. Furthermore, Poulton discovered another facet of Kirkham’s work: that of photographer, mastering a relatively new medium and using his natural sense of framing, composition, texture and contrast to document life in the untamed west.
Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.comIn all, this engrossing work provides a moving and often awe-inspiring portrait of a man who overcame considerable odds to develop and exploit his God-given talents. It sheds new light as well on the artist’s remarkable, multiple abilities, while describing in often heartbreaking detail the life and times of a man who truly did suffer for his art. A complete painting raisonné accompanies this book.
Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.com
Credit: Donna Poulton© Available at: Amazon.com