Alfred Lambourne (1850-1926)
Glimpse of Silver Lake, Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, 1882
oil on canvas
16 x 26.375 inches
Lambourne painted several commisioned works of Silver Lake in Cottonwood Canyon in the 1880"s.
Alfred Lambourne was born in Weymouth, England in 1850. He was a romantic realist landscape painter of the Rocky Mountain School who painted panoramic pictures of natural scenery in the western United States. He died in Salt Lake City in 1926.
The Lambourne family converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and immigrated to Salt Lake City in 1866. Alfred Lambourne began painting scenery for the Salt Lake Theater soon after his arrival. Although he had had some informal instruction, he was primarily self-taught.
In 1883 he painted Great Salt Cliffs at Promontory Lake. Other paintings include Black Rock Great Salt Lake (1890), Summer (1921), and Winter (1924). Two of his easel paintings Hill Cumorah and Andi-Adan-Ahman are in the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Biography adapted from Springville Museum of Art.
James T. Harwood (1860 - 1940)
Along the Jordan, 1929
Oil on board
12 x 15 inches
James Taylor Harwood was born in Lehi, Utah, on April 8, 1860, into an arts-oriented family. As a youth he spent time sketching, and later studied art with Utah artists George M. Ottinger and Danquart A. Weggeland. In 1888, at their urging, Harwood became one of the first of a group of Utah-born artists to travel to France and study art in Paris.
Before going to Paris, Harwood fell in love with his art student, Harriet Richards; and in 1891, while in Paris, they married. In 1892, he became the first Utahn to have a painting in the prestigious Paris Salon. During the next few years, the Harwood's divided their time between a Salt Lake City studio and Paris, where they returned repeatedly for “refresher” experiences. In 1904, having returned to the United States, Harwood began to teach art in the local Salt Lake City high schools and to paint in his studio.
During the period of 1907 to 1910, Harwood's style changed from tightly controlled Academic Realism paintings toward tonalism and later, Impressionism. In April of 1921, his beloved Harriet died. Two years later, Harwood became the head of the art department at the University of Utah. As chairman, he developed an art program which valued craftsmanship, an emphasis that was carried forward long after Harwood was gone.
In December of 1927, Harwood met and fell in love with a young literature student, Ione Godwin. Their relationship was considered scandalous because of the age difference of 47 years, but on June 1, 1929, they married. Harwood found in Ione the inspiration to begin a re-energized period of work.
At 70, Harwood resigned from the University of Utah to have more time to paint and took his family to Paris once again, where he painted, made prints, and participated in exhibits. Over the next nine years, Harwood's art became recognized for its almost pointillist style. He made frequent trips to Europe until 1939, when the threat of war kept the Harwoods in Salt Lake City, where he died in October of 1940.
Harwood, although an exacting draftsman, had a warm personality and was known as a “patient, loving teacher.” He also was a gifted printmaker and watercolorist.
Source: Springville Museum of Art.
James T. Harwood (1860 - 1940)
Old BY Mill Liberty Park, 1885
3 x 4 inches
Etching
Signed and dated lower left
Harwood produced several paintings and etchings of the former farm and mill of Mormon colonizer Brigham Young, which later became Liberty Park in Salt Lake City. This lovely, gem-like etching recalls the French Barbizon School training that Harwood received in Paris, and which he successfully translated into a celebration of rural life in Utah. A late afternoon sun lights the cultivated fields, and on the mill's western adobe wall, as the days sets on land that is now part of an urban oasis.
LeConte Stewart (1891 - 1990)
untitled, Kaysville, Utah, May 17, 1961
7.50 x 9.50 inches
oil on board
signed lower right
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 Yorkwhere 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 then 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, which he usually painted quickly, on-site. 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.
LeConte Stewart (1891 - 1990)
Webster's Barn, Kaysville, Utah, June 25, 1953
10.50 x 14 inches
watercolor
signed lower left
George Dibble (1904 - 1992)
untitled
watercolor
22 x 30 inches
George Dibble was perhaps the earliest proponent of non-objective painting in Utah. He remarked that, “I found my style at the Art Students League. School was drudgery until I got to New York and realized I had a point of view, that I could use it and get recognition for it.” Dibble’s interest in abstraction shaped generations of students at the U of U, where he joined the art faculty in 1949.
George S. Dibble (1904 - 1992)
Home Port
Watercolor
22 x 30 inches
signed lower right
George Dibble was born in Oahu, Hawaii in 1904. Dibble was a painter, teacher, and art critic for The Salt Lake Tribune who, throughout his career, greatly influenced numerous artists and students. He died in 1992.
He took his first art class through the mail from a Cleveland cartoonist and caricaturist. In 1926, he received his teaching certificate from the University of Utah and taught elementary school for two years. Dibble then returned to the University for additional classes in 1928. Later he studied in New York City at the Art Student's League.
In the late 1930s, the Utah State Art Center exhibited works by Dibble and Bill Parkinson in what was probably the first non-objective art show in Salt Lake City. Dibble was a member of the first Modern Artists of Utah and participated in an exhibition and helped write a formal statement to the public, both intended to increase the understanding and acceptance of modern art in Utah. George Dibble's Marine #2 was done in 1938 and exhibits the main features of a cubist painting.
Source: Utah Artists Project (University of Utah)
George S. Dibble, (1904-1992)
WP Oiler
Watercolor
30 x 22 inches
Signed lower right
George S. Dibble (1904 - 1992)
Liberty Park Series #1
Watercolor
28.50 x 31 inches
Signed lower right
George S. Dibble (1904-1992)
Sand
Watercolor
22.75 x 28.50 inches
Signed lower right
Helen "Lee" Deffebach (1928 - 2005)
Untitled (still life)
24 x 20 inches
Oil on canvas
Lee Deffebach spent 1945 – 1949 in New York City, where she first sold pictures and mirrors at Macy’s during the day, and took night art classes at the Art Students League. Absorbing the mature Abstract Expressionist ethos of the time, she created this powerful picture consisting of fractured geometric planes and elements that only suggest realistic objects. The different shades of blue foreshadow the deft and frequent use of this color throughout her career.
Helen "Lee" Deffebach (1928 - 2005)
Odd-Lot System, 1964
27.75 x 32.5 inches
Newsprint, ink on paper
Signed upper center
Odd-lot System echoes national trends in mixed-media works, combining seemingly disparate elements of newsprint and line to create vibrant composition rooted in a consciousness of time.
Throughout her long career, Deffebach experimented with various media including collage, tin, wood, and even found objects such as glass. That her style changed from Abstract Expressionist to Pop artist is unsurprising given her natural interest in innovation. Her ability to use new mediums in her work reflects her ever-growing fascination to experiment and practice in her art.
Helen "Lee" Deffebach (1928-2005)
Untitled, 1965
18 x 23 inches
Collage
signed lower left
The Volkswagen bug and bus were not only ubiquitous in American marketing but they are now iconic symbols of the 1960s. Deffebach staggers the vehicles to create the illusion of space in the composition but she leaves her own mark by incorporating oil paint. Her swatches of color are limited but serve to give the work balance and focus the viewer’s eye on the vehicles.
Deffebach’s collages coincide with the Pop art work of Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol, among others. Springing to life just as the robust economy of the 1950s intersected with the burgeoning consumer culture of the 1960s, Pop art rejected the masculine work of the Abstract Expressionists, and instead included marketing schemes and advertisements. Unlike its process-driven predecessor, Pop art could be made quickly and it shadowed America’s demand for novelty and convenience.
Helen "Lee" Deffebach (1928 - 2005)
Weed Street, Tuscarora #2, 1998
oil on canvas
10 x 12 inches
Known primarily as an abstract expressionist painter Lee Deffebach (1928 – 2005) also created semi-abstract landscapes. She was especially fond of creating scenes of Tuscarora, Nevada, where she first moved in 1956 with her then-husband Gordon Bailey. Although a depiction of tangible objects and scenery, this lively scene consists of compelling shapes, engaging colors, and expressive brushwork reminiscent of abstract painting.
V. Douglas Snow (1927 - 2009)
Havasu Cliffs, c. 1960's
oil on canvas
32 x 42 inches
Doug Snow developed a style influenced by Abstract Expressionism while a student at Cranbrook Academy of Fine Arts. When he began teaching at the University of Utah in the 1950s, he overlapped with realist / impressionist painter LeConte Stewart. According to art historian Will South, Snow was suspicious of both pure realism and straight abstractionism. In the Utah deserts he found the perfect subject matter for his need to express abstract emotions through increasingly realistic landscape features. He wrote that,
Often I think that my paintings are really bits of nature, bits of fantasy, bits of imaginative groping, all thrown together in relationships that somehow get me moving, excite me, and then I verify those abstractions from nature by my awareness of natural phenomena. So I will, in a sense, “paint falsely,” as Degas said, and add the accent of nature---literally, I authenticate my paintings by my awareness of what really happens in nature.
Although undated, Havasu Cliffs resembles in color and form Snow’s paintings from the 1960s and 1970s.
V. Douglas Snow (1927 - 2009)
Horizon Line, c. 1970's
oil on canvas
32 x 48 inches
In a play he wrote called Blind Sight, Doug Snow portrayed a character named Duncan, a revered artist, stopping his car and wandering out onto Utah’s Salt Flats. Duncan relates that, “
I’ve never felt so alone. Silence. No noise. Nothing to touch. Ideas come, but they seemed trivial…I waited…Finally…I did turn around…I suppose it was emptiness I felt. A kind of loneliness, but also a feeling of potential. Was it an abstract experience? Religious? Did it remind me of painters I admired?
Although the exact subject matter of Horizon Line is unknown, it may be an encapsulation of the emotions Snow felt when he confronted the vastness of the Salt Flats. In this extraordinary painting, an electric blue line seems to vibrate with potential, or unknowingness. Perhaps it is a remedy to the terror of a blank canvas that an artist faces? As a viewer, we sense emptiness and possibility as well.
Frank Anthony Smith (1939 - )
Scarecrow, 1983
43 x 55 inches
acrylic on canvas
One art curator wrote that, "Tony Smith’s paintings are works in motion…abundant in visual and psychological intrigue…imbued with magic, possibility, and surprise.” A professor at the U of U from 1966 - 2001, uses illusionism, light, and color to create magical moments. Smith remarked that, “What is important to me is magic, literal magic, a sense that the world is changeable, surprising, that it’s more than you think."
Nel Ivancich (1941 – 2014)
Placido, 1986
29 x 21 inches
mixed media on paper
On loan from Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
“Much of my work refers to the spare and wild terrain surrounding my home next to the Santa Rosa National Monument in Southern California’s high desert. Whether it is the sense of being enveloped within the dramatic day and night skies or feeling attuned to the slow growing patterns of desert fauna, living close to Nature provides ongoing inspiration. My intention is to spotlight in the abstract what appear to be brief intervals within natural and human-made accumulations over time.”
Biography:
Nel Ivancich was born in Salt Lake City in 1941. She was a painter of color field abstractions. Don Olsen, a foremost Utah painter, was her instructor at Jordan High School. Ivancich said “I appreciated his enthusism for art and his ability to encourage confidence in his students.” She studied at Chouinard Institute of Art in Los Angeles. She earned her BFA in 1985, and her MFA in 1987 from the University of Utah. Ivancich said about her education “Professors Tony Smith, Sam Wilson, Bob Kleinschmidt and Doug Snow provided a quality mix of instruction, humor and example during a particularly energetic time in the Art Department, when Dr. Robert “Bob“ Olpin presided as Dean.” She was life-long friends with Cathy Pardike, Lee Deffebach, Susan Slade and Carolyn Coalson. She said they “shared my enthusiasm for abstract art and artists and, even though three of us have since left Utah, we maintain contact and friendship.”
Sam Wilson (1943 - )
Deductive Migration, June 1984
Oil on canvas
36 x 42 inches
signed and dated
Roger "Sam" Wilson was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1943. Wilson is a painter that specializes in realism and illusion. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah where he teaches at the University of Utah.
Wilson completed a Masters degree at California State University, Long Beach. Wilson has been an illustrator for Carl Sagen's Cosmos on P.B.S., a "Magician" with Paramount Pictures, and working in stage design, construction, and silk screening for Silent Running for Universal Studios.
Wilson's work has been exhibited throughout the Intermountain Region and in California, earning him numerous awards. In the 1980s he spent 16 months doing the interior of the Cathedral of the Madeline in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Source: The Springville Museum of Art
Paul H.Davis (1946- )
Enigmatic Figure
24 x 24 inches
oil on board
Paul Davis, a painter, teacher, and art administrator, was born December 2, 1946, in Quonset Point, Rhode Island. As Davis looks to the future he continues to accelerate in his painting career. He is currently working on opening a studio/gallery for Utah artists.
After attending Boston University and earning both a Bachelor of Fine Art in 1973, and a Master of Fine Art in 1975, Davis began a long and distinguished career as a teacher and painter. He taught at Boston University, Regis College, Art Institute of Boston, and the University of Utah, from which he recently retired.
Davis has exhibited around the state of Utah as well as in numerous group exhibits throughout the country. His work has been seen at the Bountiful Art Center, the Kimball Art Center, Springville Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery, the America Haus and many others. Paul Davis is the recipient of the Painting Prize, "Utah '80" from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the Utah Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship, and the Western States Arts Federation/N.E.A. Fellowship for Visual Artists.
Source: Biography adapted from Springville Museum of Art
