Untitled oil by LeConte Stewart, c. 1950’s from the collection of Roger L and Linda Morgan Hicks Family inherited from Dale Morgan, Historian.
An interesting and alluring aspect of the work on display at the Bountiful/Davis Art Center’s LeConte Stewart Festival: A Teacher’s Teacher is the absence of people in the paintings by Stewart. Perhaps the well-known regionalist wanted the viewer to place themselves within his world, rumbling down the rutted roads of Davis County or enjoying the cool air along a mountain creek bed. Dr. Nathan B. Winters, a student and friend of Stewart’s, stated it well in his presentation at the exhibit’s opening reception when he said, “he did not paint for money, but he painted so that he could get out in the sun, feel the breeze and listen to a brook.”
After a five-year hiatus the annual exhibition honoring Davis County’s most famous artist has returned to the BDAC, providing viewers the opportunity to enter a half-century-long span of the artist’s work. I welcomed the invitation and joined Stewart in the dappled sunlight of the outdoors along one of the dusty roads, delighting in the calmness of just being. At some point in my visit to the festival, I placed myself on a three-legged stool next to Stewart and opened my own wooden box of paints. As I joined him in a hay field, I wondered if his paint daubs had formed a breeze blown crust as he completed the “House in Farmington in Springtime.” Did his brushstrokes keep time to the rhythm of the Weber River as it traversed the canyon? Or, as he painted another scrub oak onto a riverbank, was he listening to the same cicada sounds reverberating in the trees that I listen to each evening?Was his fondness for sagebrush inspired, like in my own fond memory, by the smell of wet sage after a rainstorm (Arizona, ’34 Deseret Ranch, 1934). There is a magic in his landscapes that conjures the essence of time and place of days gone by.
Arizona, 1934, Deseret Ranch, lithograph – 1934, permanent collection- Bountiful/Davis Art Center
Some of the most captivating works on display are the various pastels — their centered roads leading the viewer to continue “just around the bend,” stopping short to allow the audience to create the rest of the story. It is through the eyes of this shy and unpretentious man that we are able to experience a pastoral perspective of Utah’s beauty. “West Kaysville Fields, ” “Threshing,” and ” House on Lane in Kaysville,” provide the viewer with an invitation to slow down and take a moment to enjoy the vast nature of Utah as Stewart witnessed it.
Dr. Winters spoke about Stewarts’ progression as a sign painter to one of the most revered and influential artists in Utah history, detailing his contributions to art education throughout Utah. Stewart was a master of color and perspective, as in his detailing in the orange and burnt umber of fall foliage against the blue/grey rooftop in an untitled oil painted in the 1950’s. Muted grays and browns set the scene and the single pop of orange becomes a center of interest. He was also a master of organized space as evidenced by his placement of color. Stewart passed on his techniques and vision to generations of Utah painters. His influence as a teacher is demonstrated by accompanying exhibits by some of his students: exhibits by Diane Turner (and her students, Tanja Watts, Maryanne Nybo , and Thomas Aikins) and Davis County artists Larry Wade and Glen Hawkins are all on display in adjacent rooms of the BDAC.
West Kaysville Fields, by LeConte Stewart, 1976, pastel from the collection of Bountiful/Davis Art Center
Threshing, by LeConte Stewart, 1922, from the collection of Alice G. Telford
House on Lane in Kaysville, by LeConte Stewart, c.1950’s, from the collection of Ross and Mary Davis, Bountiful
There may be good reason for the resurrection of the LeConte Stewart Festival after five years. As a Davis County native, I recognized many of the scenes, but I also know that growth in the county has obliterated most of these places and we have Stewart’s images to remind us that life wasn’t always about I-15 construction, Downtown Rising or campaign donations. As I meandered through the collection, I wondered what Stewart might have been seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and experiencing as he created his plein air time capsules. These paintings offer a refreshing nostalgia, transporting the viewer to a moment when pace was determined by a drum unhurried by the pressures of an accelerated society. Through his paintings Stewart continues to teach, and while his lessons on color are still invigorating his most salient points are about perspective.
House in Farmington in Springtime by LeConte Stewart, from the collection of Howard and Elizabeth Burkholz
UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Categories: Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts
