{"id":8883,"date":"2012-01-06T08:04:08","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T08:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=8883"},"modified":"2023-11-22T17:18:28","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T23:18:28","slug":"donna-poultons-reuben-kirkham-pioneer-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/donna-poultons-reuben-kirkham-pioneer-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"Donna Poulton\u2019s Reuben Kirkham: Pioneer Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Reuben<\/a>If you\u2019ve been to Salt Lake County\u2019s governmental buildings at 21st and State \u2014 for a public hearing, to get a business license, or to dispose of your fluorescent lights \u2014 you\u2019ve probably seen it at the top of the North building\u2019s escalator: an ambitious, if sometimes clumsy, canvas, its debt to the Hudson River School obvious, \u201cWilds of the Wasatch\u201d depicts an alpine setting full of jagged peaks, with an evening sun, shaded by passing clouds, lighting a mountain lake in golden-green tones (because of the grandeur of the scene, or your rush to complete your errand, you may have missed the two small figures in the foreground, native Americans dressed in blue and red). The artist is Reuben Kirkham, one of Utah\u2019s earliest painters. This past month, Donna Poulton, curator of art of Utah and the West at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, brought out a handsomely produced monograph on Kirkham, rich with color and monochrome plates illustrating her story of the artist\u2019s life of lost love, highway robbery, and yards and yards of traveling canvas.<\/p>\n

In 1850, Kirkham\u2019s family emigrated to the U.S. from their home in Lancashire, England. They headed to the West, landing in New Orleans, then sailing up the Mississippi to settle, first in St. Louis, and then Wisconsin. Along the way Kirkham\u2019s sister Ann married Thomas Briggs, a Mormon, and eventually most of the family joined the LDS church. Their plans to reach Salt Lake were thwarted, however, for nearly a decade. Briggs broke a leg and was unable to work for a time, and another sister, Mary, threatened to kill herself if the family moved west. The Kirkhams only arrived in Utah in 1868, a year before wagons were replaced by trains, and the age of Pioneers ended. Kirkham was twenty-three.<\/p>\n

Kirkham brought to Utah a love of nature and a burning desire to paint (a box of paints given to him for Christmas in 1861 ignited his first explorations). \u201cWith all the encumbrances of pioneer existence he continued to hope to be an artist,\u201d Poulton writes of Kirkham\u2019s arrival in Salt Lake. \u201cReuben sketched on whatever he could find, often using charcoal from the fire and old scraps of paper. He used his good pencils to work out the more demanding problems of sketching technique, such as perspective or modeling with shadow and light, and these were the most satisfying moments of his day.\u201d<\/p>\n

In pioneer Utah, artistic study was restricted to viewing the work of itinerant artists and working with one\u2019s peers, and patrons, in communities with more pressing needs than fine d\u00e9cor, were scarce. Kirkham did odd jobs and worked on the farms of relatives and neighbors. Like many other painters, he earned money painting interiors and hanging wallpaper. He also began a lifelong association with the theater, both as an artist and actor, and his first big artistic break was painting stage scenery at the Lehi Music Hall with fellow painter Alfred Lambourne.<\/p>\n

We know much of this because of the journal Kirkham began keeping in the early 1870s. This document provides meat for Poulton\u2019s text, and she serves it up wonderfully garnished with historical context from primary and secondary sources.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From the journals, we learn that Kirkham\u2019s trip with Lambourne in 1874, to study art in the east, ended in disaster when Kirkham was held up by a notorious desperado. He was forced to stop with his sister Mary, in Illinois, in order to raise money for a new train fare \u2014 not to join Lambourne, who had continued on, but to return to Salt Lake, where the girl he had left behind was writing fewer and fewer letters. He had as little luck heading west as east though. By the time he returned to Salt Lake his fickle sweetheart had found another beau.<\/p>\n

The reader will be happy to learn that not all of Kirkham\u2019s life was like 1874. But since, as Poulton says, some journal keepers write \u201cwhen they are depressed or low as a way to unburden themselves,\u201d after Kirkham\u2019s life improves \u2014 with business ventures that provide needed income and a happy marriage to Echo Squires \u2014 his journal entries became increasingly sporadic and we must begin to track his life through sketchbooks and newspaper accounts.<\/p>\n

It is in the newspapers that we follow Kirkham\u2019s ventures with panoramas, a series of large-scale paintings designed to be shown in the round, or serially as part of a theatrical performance. The first was begun with Alfred Lambourne, featured over 7,000 square feet of canvas, and depicted scenes from across the United States. The second featured scenes from the Book of Mormon and a theatrical presentation \u201cpunctuated … with songs, instrumental pieces, and character sketches from books and the theater that would be interesting to children and adults alike.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panoramas allowed Kirkham to travel the state and earn a sort of living before his life was cut short in 1886. His determination to paint may have been his undoing. His health had never been excellent, and though he officially died of typhoid pneumonia, knowing what we do now about the chemicals a painter used at the time, his wife\u2019s belief \u2014 that it was his painting that killed him \u2014 may not be unfounded. Though his easel paintings received some praise from the critics of his time, Kirkham never quite painted himself out of the pioneer artist mold. With his determination to continue painting, however, one wonders what he might have achieved had he made it back east, or lived past his forty-first birthday.<\/p>\n

Reuben Kirkham: Pioneer Artist,\u00a0<\/em>published by Cedar Fort in Springville, is an attractive volume. The illustrations \u2014 over thirty color plates of the artist\u2019s works, as well as numerous photographs, including ones of Kirkham onstage in various roles \u2014 are very well produced. Notes have been placed at the end of each chapter, providing easy access to source material and extended discussions of the text. Researchers \u2014 and collectors looking to score at estate sales \u2014 will find the Catalog Raison\u00e9 \u2019s detailed descriptions of the 162 known works by Kirkham a boon (though historians of related subjects will lament the book\u2019s lack of an index).<\/p>\n

A book like\u00a0Reuben Kirkham,<\/em>\u00a0which breaks ground by exploring the life and work of a relatively unknown artist, is never easy to write. One must consider at what point historical context becomes textual filler; when conditionals, like “might,” “could” and “would,” obfuscate rather than illuminate; and where space devoted to questions of research become stumbling blocks for the average reader. Poulton does an admirable job balancing these concerns. Her unfettered prose sails along smoothly, stopping only occasionally to tease out an argument or delve into context that would have appeared out of the corner of the subject\u2019s eye. Most of all, Poulton has a keen eye for art and, alongside the judgments of Kirkham\u2019s contemporaries, is able to describe and analyze the struggles and successes of this early Utah artist. It comes too late as a holiday gift, but Donna Poulton\u2019s\u00a0Reuben Kirkham\u00a0<\/em>makes a wonderful addition to any library of Utah art. And if you\u2019re just beginning to collect, what better way to start than with one of Utah\u2019s earliest artists.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can purchase Reuben Kirkham: Pioneer Artist<\/em>\u00a0at\u00a0Williams Fine Art<\/a>\u00a0or online at\u00a0amazon.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of Donna Poulton’s biography of pioneer artist Reuben Kirkham, recently published by Cedar Fort press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,55],"tags":[784,783],"class_list":["post-8883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-historical-artists","tag-donna-poulton","tag-reuben-kirkham"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/050.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 00:05:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8883"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72156,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions\/72156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}