LeConte Stewart

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LeConte Stewart (born 1891 in Glenwood, Utah; died 1990 in Kaysville, Utah) was a Mormon artist primarily known for his landscapes of rural Utah. His media included oils, watercolors, pastel and charcoal, as well as etchings, linocuts, and lithographs. His home/studio in Kaysville is on the National Register of Historic Places.

His art education began in 1912 at the University of Utah, and included studies at the Art Students League summer school at Woodstock, New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Chester Springs. Stewart became the head of the Art Department at the University of Utah in 1938, and held that post until his retirement in 1956.

LeConte Stewart is best known for his unidealized landscapes of rural Utah, spawning the term "LeConte Stewart Country." Stewart is quoted as saying in 1935, "It is not that I love the lyrical in nature the less, but I feel that in modern life there is no time, no inclination for it. In these pictures I'm trying to cut a slice of contemporary life as it is in the highways and biways as I have found it."^[1] Some of Stewart's paintings have a photographic quality from a distance but are actually formed with broad strokes and a thick palette.^[2]

Much of his work uses direct impressionistic techniques to convey the meaning of what he saw around him, illustrating things "...that are introspective, that you peer into, that you understand and feel."^[3] LeConte stated: "Impressionism is the most important painting innovation of all time....I thought to myself, why not use this technique to express an idea rather than making it the end goal of a painting? I have tried to think of it as a means of interpreting landscaping rather than making it merely impressionistic."^[4]

Stewart described himself as having an urgency in his work. A plaque in the Kaysville Gallery of Art reads: "I had a great urgency to work as rapidly as possible. Each Saturday I painted one large 24-by-30-inch picture in the morning and another in the afternoon. Between I painted four smaller studies. Six was an average Saturday for me."^[5]

In addition to landscapes, Stewart also did portraiture and murals. He painted several murals for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints buildings, including works found inside the LDS temples in Hawaii, Alberta, and Arizona, as well as murals for the Salt Lake City International Airport and the historic Bigelow-Ben Lomond Hotel. In 1985 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published a collectors item titled LeConte Stewart: The spirit of landscape by Robert Davis, which documented some of his works.