Ensign February 1985, 38 DESERT, BRUSH, AND OIL A PORTRAIT OF LECONTE STEWART By Robert O. Davis On a country road in a northern Utah farming and suburban community lies a Normandy- style cottage surrounded by trees and overgrown brush. Bordering the property are a fence and a rutted dirt lane. Within a few blocks of this cottage are forthright, solid brick homes built by Latter-day Saint pioneers and their descendants. To the west is a rich agricultural flatland reaching toward the Great Salt Lake. To the east are foothills dotted with an occa­ sional stone or brick farmhouse. Forming a backdrop is the great snowcapped Wasatch mountain range. This is the home of LeConte Stewart, ninety-three-year-old dean of Utah landscape paint­ ers. This is land he knows and loves. The scrub oak against hill and mountainside, the in­ terplay of rural buildings and cultivated farmland, primitive roads which wind into pastoral views, scruffy, dry creek beds, weathered old barns which seem to sink into the earth— these are the elements which inspire his painting. LeConte Stewart is known as one of the finest LDS artists of the twentieth century. He has been commissioned by the Church to work on the murals in three temples and is well known for his impressionistic paintings of the desert landscape and northern Utah farm scenery. Over two hundred of his pieces are now being featured in a large one-man exhi­ bition at the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City. The exhibit is called "LeConte Stewart: the Spirit of Landscape." Growing Up LeConte Stewart was born in Glenwood, Utah, in 1891, and raised in nearby Richfield. His grandfather, who joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after meeting Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, followed the Saints west and settled in Draper, where he was a bishop for thirty-nine years. Four of his sons became attorneys, including LeConte's father, Isaac John Stewart. LeConte spent many hours hunting and fishing with his father, and they often traveled to­ gether while his father acted as county attorney. During these trips, the boy became closely acquainted with the stark desert country. Years later he recalled his love of the de­ sert and how it affected his art. "I have always been fond of sagebrush," he said. "I often slip a piece in my pocket and carry it with me. It is eau de cologne to me. It symbolizes the desert as I see and think and feel about it." His love of drawing is a natural extension of his love of the desert. Looking back on his life, he cannot remember a time when he wasn't interested in drawing. To occupy himself during dull arithmetic or reading lessons, he drew pictures. The classroom made him rest­ less; he longed to be out of doors. "After school," he remembers, "I was out with my sketch book down by the creek." One teacher from those early years, Sophia Gulbranson, recognized his talent and gave him some needed encouragement. He often sketched for her on the blackboard. Later as a student at Ricks Academy (which became Ricks College), LeConte was the art editor for the school paper, Student Rays. One day he found an ad in an art magazine for the Art Students League in New York City and its summer school at Woodstock, New York. "I made up my mind there and then that I was going," he says. He began to save money, working summers in the Idaho fields and later lettering signs for local businesses; but he did not tell his family of his decision, for his dream seemed out of the question in a family of lawyers. During his senior year in high school, his father pulled him aside. "He asked me what I thought I was going to do with this painting business," Brother Stewart recalls. "I gave him my answer, which visibly grieved him. 'Well, you know you can't make a living at it,' he said. 'But I can have fun doing it,' I replied." Look­ ing back on his life, LeConte says, "That's the only reason I've painted—it's been fun." Around graduation time LeConte's father died suddenly, and LeConte went to Salt Lake City where he lived with his uncle, William M. Stewart, dean of the education school at the University of Utah. Still trying to save money to go to New York, he got a job teaching sixth grade in Murray, Utah. During his evenings he would stop by the Salt Lake City Li­ brary and "rush through their files on art and miss my supper." Finally, in June 1913, after two years of teaching and with six hundred dollars in savings, he caught a train and enrolled in the Art Students League School in the Catskill Mountains to study landscape painting, and in the fall attended the league's school in New York City. This was a period of dedication and hard work. "I had to pay tuition, so I sacrificed every­ thing else," Brother Stewart says. "I rented a top room with no windows, and there were bedbugs. I became quite sick, but I was determined to become certified, so I stuck it out." When school closed the next spring, LeConte returned to Utah on his last five dollars. Because he could not support himself solely on his art, he accepted a position teaching seventh grade in Kaysville, Utah. This job gave him time to paint after school and during summer vacations. However, LeConte was dismayed that there was no art program in the Davis County schools. So, for no additional pay, he taught art through the noon hour and conducted monthly in-service classes for elementary school teachers. After class he walked home with one of the teachers, Zipporah Layton. The two courted, and when LeConte was called on a mission to Hawaii in 1917, Zipporah was given special permission to go to Hawaii on a mission to teach in the elementary schools. When LeConte's call was changed from a proselyting mission to a work mis­ sion—painting murals for the Hawaii temple—the two were married. They built their home in Kaysville in the early 1920s and raised three sons and a daughter there. One son, Maynard Dixon Stewart, followed his father and is now a professor of art at San Jose State University and a successful landscape and portrait artist. True to the long­ standing Stewart family tradition, two of the sons entered the legal profession. John has served as precinct judge, and Birge is a Salt Lake City attorney. LeConte and Zipporah's daughter, Mary, sings in the Tabernacle Choir. Devotion to his wife and children has always taken precedence in LeConte Stewart's life. Sister Stewart recalled that many times she "kept the children in bed until after he had gone. He is very sensitive about the family, and if he knew they were sick, he wouldn't go paint." Throughout their married life together, Sister Stewart handled the business side of her hus­ band's art. A huge number of his paintings were sold at the little gift shop she owned and managed in Kaysville, Utah. She died in the spring of 1984. The Stewart home was a happy one. Sister Stewart told of their Christmas traditions. "For days before Christmas day, our house, 'Noisemakers' Inn' as Dad always called it, was decorated with sentimental Christmas decorations brought down from the closet and attic. Dad's Santa portrait was always hung over the fireplace in the living room. Dad was al­ ways the last to unwrap his gifts—he couldn't bear to spoil the artistic paper and bows." To provide for his young family, Brother Stewart continued to teach. From 1923 to 1938 he served as head of Ogden High School's art department. Hundreds of magnificent paintings date from these years. However, the price he could get for them barely paid for the mate­ rials and a good frame. In 1938 LeConte Stewart was appointed Chairman of the Art Department at the University of Utah. As a teacher, he taught through example, working side by side with his students. A group of his former University of Utah students showed their gratitude by presenting him with a plaque inscribed with a message thanking him for his inspired teaching and "for the beauty that remained hidden until your brush revealed it to an amazed and grateful world." Through all these years of teaching, his first love was always painting. After school he painted and sketched, and on Saturdays he traveled to the rural mountain valleys above his home to paint his best loved sites. During World War II all three of his boys served in the armed forces. Although they re­ turned safely, one was shot down in a B-17 bomber and the Stewarts had no news of him for several months. During this time of anxiety, Brother Stewart wrote to his sons of the fol­ lowing experience: "While [I was] shaving ... , something came to me which caused me conducted monthly in-service classes for elementary school teachers. After class he walked home with one of the teachers, Zipporah Layton. The two courted, and when LeConte was called on a mission to Hawaii in 1917, Zipporah was given special permission to go to Hawaii on a mission to teach in the elementary schools. When LeConte's call was changed from a proselyting mission to a work mis­ sion—painting murals for the Hawaii temple—the two were married.