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BENT FRANKLIN LARSEN

1882 - 1970

BiographyIn 1929 Harold R. Clark of the Brigham Young University helped sponsor B. F. Larsen on a year's sabbatical to France. This trip proved to be the artist's most creative period, allowing Larsen enough time and inspiration to produce his best work. Unlike his 1924-25 trip when he studied at the Academie Julian in Paris, this year long stay was more of a painting trip to Paris, Moret Sur-Loing, Cordes and Uzerche in France, Cuenca in Spain and Fez in Morocco.

Marie Hull, an important painter from Mississippi, was with B. F. Larsen for part of the painting expedition. Later they exchanged exhibitions in Mississippi and Provo Utah. Because he was able to devote full-time to painting, Larsen was able to produce about one-third of his life's oeuvre [work] during this creative period. Uzerche Tannery is one of Larsen's strongest oils and demonstrates his mentor's, Andre L'hote's abstract influences. When he returned to Utah in 1930, he was classed among Utah's "Modernists". His work was an amalgam of powerful brushwork and rhythms, with subtle and earthy citrus colors.

Biography courtesy Springville Museum of Art

From website: http://www.lib.utah.edu/fa/UtahArtists/artists/larsen/

Larsen, B. F. (Brent Franklin) (1882-1970). Born in Monroe, Utah, B. F. Larsen went on to become a varied contributor to the state's artistic tradition as a robust landscape painting stylist with the capacities of a pioneering art educator and prolific local art historian as well. Having studied first at Snow College (graduate, 1901) and Brigham Young University (B.A., 1912), he held a number of local jobs - Provo public school principal (1901-6), Springville schools art supervisor (1907-8), first director of what would become the Springville Museum of Art, director of art at the Brigham Young Training Schools (1908-12), and associate professor of art at BYU (1912). Larsen was eventually awarded a degree from the University of Utah (M.A., 1922). The painter moved on for more studio work at the Art Institute of Chicago immediately thereafter, and by 1924, he was in Paris for a year at the Julian. Larsen returned to Utah after a painting trip in Europe in 1929-30 and, after his second Parisian experience, resumed his job at BYU in 1930-31, bringing a slightly less conservative view to the art training there. Appointed to the BYU art chair six years later, Larsen continued on with that responsibility until 1953; the BYU art program felt his strong influence for a long time to come. (b. May 10; d. January 3)

Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 161.

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