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for JOHN WILLARD CLAWSON
JOHN WILLARD CLAWSON
1858 - 1936
Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 55.
Person TypeIndividual
Biographya grandson of Brigham Young, was born in the Beehive house. "Will" Clawson had studied back home with George Ottinger (q.v.) at the University of Deseret and was advised to go East for further training as an unusually gifted young artist. Marrying in 1880, the painter and his bride, Mary Clark Clawson, were off to new York City the following year, and in 1882 the Utahn enrolled in the National Academy of Design. After three years, he went back in Salt Lake City to open a studio. Clawson always preferred painting landscapes, but from the start, portrait commissions were what kept his business going. He went for art training in Paris early in 1889, with study in Venice and London afterward. Moving on to San Francisco in the first decade of the new century, Clawson became a rather well-paid and very painterly portraitist and newspaper illustrator for the rest of his life; he had many portrait commissions in both Utah and elsewhere--San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City especially. (b. January 18)
Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 55.