LeConte Stewart, Utah landscape artist, Utah artist

CARDSTON CANADA
OCT 6 A.M. 1920

Oil on paperboard

6.75 X 8.5 Inches

Available- Price Upon Request

West Ogden, January 1929

pencil

8 x 11 inches

SOLD

LeConte Stewart, utah landscapes

Winter in Petterson, Feb. 4, 1950

Oil on board

18 x 24 inches

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LeConte Stewart, utah artist, utah landscape

A Blue Day, 1925

oil on canvas affixed to board

12 x 16 inches

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Green River

Oil on board

8 x 10 inches

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untitled (victorian home), 1939

Watercolor

17 x 23 inches

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Road to the Village, 1925

Oil on board

18 x 24 inches

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Kaysville, Jan. 1 1917

Oil on board

8 x 10 inches

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Green River After Sunset, August 12, 1923

Oil on board

6 x 12 inches

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The Favorite Prescription

oil on canvas

18 x 24 inches

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5th South and West Temple, Salt Lake City, June 1940

8 x 10 inches

oil on board

SOLD

LeConte Stewart may be Utah’s most important painter of both landscapes and the American scene. Stewart’s work took a serious turn in the 1930s as the Depression deepened. Inspired by Edward Hopper and others, he portrayed city scenes, such as this one in downtown Salt Lake City, with equal parts honesty, poignancy, and skill. With his excellent draftsmanship skills, Stewart was able to employ thick brushstrokes in an economical manner to create an effective composition of vertical, diagonal, and horizontal lines. As viewers, we’re transported to a ramshackle back street that speaks of the American condition.

The Old Homestead, 1923

Oil on board

18 x 24 inches

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By the 1920s, Stewart had consolidated his various instructors’ influences and developed his own style that employed thick paint and vigorous, confident brushwork. He created representational, unidealized depictions of the world that he saw being swallowed up by development. In The Old Homestead, Stewart depicts a drab day in November that nevertheless shows the dignity of rural Utah farm life.

Untitled (farmhouse scene

with snow), 1949

Oil on board

20 x 24 inches

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LeConte Stewart told author Mary Muir that as a young boy, he often traveled with his lawyer father to neighboring towns. Already an aspiring artist and inveterate sketcher, he saw barns, sheds and houses in various states of repair. Writes Muir, “With these memories he experienced a peculiar isolation, an indescribable loneliness, (Stewart told her), ‘which all my life I have yearned to put down in paint.’”

By this point in his career, Stewart was at the height of his compositional skills. The craggy tree on the right anchors that side of the scene, and the deftly painted, rickety fence leads our eyes into the heart of the image: an old barn and farmhouse nestled in trees. Though it’s winter and the trees are bare, the striking, blue tones which characterizes many of Stewart’s beloved winter scenes mitigate the loneliness of the moment.

Untitled, (house on a small bluff), c. 1930's

Oil on canvas

12 x 16 inches

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LeConte Stewart, in looking back on his output in the 1930s, once remarked that, “I had a period of five to eight years which had to do with very ordinary matters...things such as we see along the highways and byways. Stewart saw dignity in the ordinary, such as this house on a bluff, and the rural life it represented. He refused to sanitize a scene by taking out modern elements, such as power poles and lines; he also didn’t hesitate to take artistic license by arranging elements to create a successful composition.

Colton, circa 1930’s

Oil on canvas

12 x 15.5 inches

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Perhaps the most beloved of all historical Utah painters, LeConte Stewart had a hardscrabble childhood in rural, central Utah. He developed a love for the land and a work ethic that led him to paint almost every day of his long life. At age 20, he went to New York state to train at the Art Students League in Manhattan and the Woodstock Art School in Woodstock, New York. Among his teachers were John F. Carlson, Ernest Blumenschein and Walter Goltz.

He later attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Chester Springs. Stewart enjoyed a long career as a high school and university art instructor in Utah, but he is best know for his honest, tonal-impressionist scenes of Utah landscapes as well as his American scene paintings of the 1930s and 40s. In Colton, Stewart found beauty in the rugged, gritty existence of the rural rancher’s life.

Untitled, (scene with road and farmhouse), 1978

Oil on canvas

12 x 18 inches

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In his later career, Stewart revisited some earlier themes and scenes, with a modified painting technique that included thinner

paint application. His insistence on painting scenes that moved him, often with a road leading the viewer into the picture,

remained. Even on the coldest winter days, he could be seen on the side of the road with his easel set-up, striving to capture a certain mood.

LeConte Stewart, White House with Green Roof, utah artist, utah art, landscape

Untitled (House with green roof), 1978

11 x 14 inches

watercolor

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LeConte Stewart, Utah, Utah art, Utah artist,

Untitled, 1978

7.5 x 11 inches

Watercolor on paper

SOLD

LeConte Stewart, Utah, utah art, western art, Utah artist

Untitled (red barn with silo), 1978

7 x 10.5 inches

Watercolor on paper

SOLD

Symphony in Green, Porterville, 1957

16 x 20 inches

Oil on Canvas

SOLD

LeConte Stewart

American, 1891-1990

LeConte Stewart was born in 1891 in Glenwood, Utah. His extensive art education began with study in 1912 at the University of Utah with Edwin Evans and private instruction with A.B. Wright. From 1913 through 1914, he attended the Art Students League summer school at Woodstock, New York where he studied with John F. Carlson and Walter Goltz. He later attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Chester Springs.

During his art study, Stewart pursued a teaching career, starting in 1911 when he became an elementary teacher in the Murray City Schools. He taught in several Utah school districts, including Davis County, Salt Lake, and Ogden. He left Ogden Senior High School to become chairman of the Art Department at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he retired in 1956 as professor emeritus.

LeConte Stewart mainly painted oil landscapes on-site, which he usually painted quickly. He is predominantly known for his unidealized paintings of rural Utah, but he was also very productive in portraiture, mural painting, drawing, etching, lithography, pastel, and design.