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for NATHANIEL SPENS
NATHANIEL SPENS
1838-1916
Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 242-3.
Person TypeIndividual
BiographyOther pioneer artists who arrived just after initial settlement of the Utah area were destined to a more primitive approach in their painting than, say, an Alfred Lambourne (q.v.) or a John Tullidge (q.v.). Today, they are thought of in the context of smaller outlying Utah settlements. Possibly the oldest of these men was Nathaniel Spens, a Scot from Edinburgh, who arrived in Utah around 1865. In Salt Lake City first, Spens soon settled in American Fork in Utah Valley, and although he eventually worked on paintings and decorations for both the Salt Lake Temple and Tabernacle, and carved a railing for a stairway in the Manti Temple, this artist remained (first in American Fork and later in Mountainville near Mount Pleasant, Utah) essentially a rural primitive, spending his life working on some wood-graining, a good number of painted copies from "popular magazines, chromos and the like" (ill-understood military actions, naval paintings, and some occasionally very funny and frequently quite sentimental genre scenes), as well as an original painting every once in a while, which can sometimes be pleasing in its color and relaxed naïf strength. (b. June 21; d. November 25)
Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 242-3.