American, 1878-1950 
 

Lee Greene Richards has been celebrated as one of Utah’s most significant artists. Trained at both the Academie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris just after the turn of the 20th century, Richards was an integral part of the cohort of Utah-based artists that included Mahonri Young, A.B. Wright, and John Willard Clawson. It may have been Richards’ frequent visits to and residencies in Paris that influenced his painting of Bryce Canyon. Art historians Donna Poulton and Vern Swanson assert that, “As a landscape painter, Richards unleashed a fury of Impressionistic brushwork and Fauvisthues…While his contributions to red-rock genre were few, they are significant. He might be the first artist to paint a semi-modern view of Bryce Canyon.” (Painters of Utah’s Canyons and Deserts, p. 56)