BiographyBurnside, Wesley "Wes" Mason (1918-1994), of Mount Pleasant and Provo, was an art historian, collector, and regional realist-landscape painter in oils and watercolors. As a student, Burnside attended Brigham Young University (B.S., 1941; M.S., 1949) and Ohio State University (Ph.D., 1970). Appointed in 1958 to serve on the BYU faculty, Burnside wrote a fine study of the life and art of Maynard Dixon (q.v.), and he and a group of student assistants gathered material for a history of Utah artists. He also became a moving force in the development of the BYU art collection into the early 1980s, and was very much committed to building an art museum at BYU. (b. November 16)
Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 44-5.