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LECONTE STEWART

1891 - 1990

Biographyof Richfield, Murray, and Kaysville, Utah, was a painter and teacher who was, with good reason, one of Utah's most respected and well-loved older artists. Stewart was born in Glenwood, Utah; his family moved to Richfield, Utah, in 1893 and to Rexburg, Idaho, in 1907, where he attended Ricks Academy. In 1911, Stewart moved to Murray and found a teaching job. There, he continued to study art, painting his first oils. He studied with Edwin Evans (q.v.) at the University of Utah in 1912, and also took some private lessons with A.B. Wright (q.v.) before going on to the Art Students League in New York the next year. Returning to Utah in June 1914, Stewart then worked for a Salt Lake engraving company, painted signs and billboards in the area, and found a job the next fall at the Davis County Schools. He was hired as an art teacher at East High School in Salt Lake City in the 1920s (after painting various LDS temple murals), and then a year later went to Ogden High as head of the art program there. Stewart continued on at Ogden High until 1938 when he was appointed department head of the U of U. A calligrapher, lithographer, etcher, and designer as well as a painter, he offered these skills to college-level students for the next eighteen years. Stewart remained a realist throughout his career, but his appeal as a landscape painter was as a tonal impressionist whose sensitive views (mostly around his home in Kaysville) tell of a rural quiet not often immediately accessible to most of us. (b. April 15)

Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 245.

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