A Utah painter and designer who lived for ninety-nine years, LeConte Stewart was known for his landscape paintings, church murals, teaching, and work in print mediums including lithography and etching. It is believed that he completed about 7000 paintings, most of them oils but a few in pastel.

Stewart was born in Sevier County, Utah to Isaac and Anna Eva Helper Stewart, and in 1917, married Zipporah Layton in Hawaii.

As a young man, he lived in Richfield, Utah, and then moved briefly to Rexburg, Idaho to study at Ricks Academy. At age 20, he went to New York state to become a student at the Art Students League in Manhattan and the Woodstock Art School in Woodstock, New York. Among his teachers were Thomas Fogarty, Ernest Blumenschein and George Bridgman.

Stewart returned to Utah and taught at Ogden High School and the University of Utah, where from 1938 to1954, he was chair of the Art Department.

His work is in the collections of the Postmaster General's Office in Washington DC, the University of Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Museum of Church History and Art, and Southern State Utah State College.

LeConte Stewart died in June 1990 and is buried at the Kaysville Cemetery in Kaysville, Utah.


Submitted by Linda McAdoo, Fine-Art Appraiser

Source:
Obituary of the artist, Salt Lake Tribune, June 3, 1990

LeConte Stewart was born in 1891 in Glenwood, Utah. His extensive art education began with study in 1912 at the University of Utah with Edwin Evans and private instruction with A.B. Wright. From 1913 through 1914 he attended the Art Students League summer school at Woodstock, New York where he studied with John F. Carlosn and Walter Goltz. He later attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Chester Springs.

During his art study, Stewart pursued a teaching career, starting in 1911 when he became an elementary teacher in the Murray City Schools. He then taught in Davis County schools, Salt Lake schools, and Ogden schools. He left Ogden Senior High School to become chairman of the Art Department at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he retired in 1956 as professor emeritus.

LeConte Stewart mainly painted oil landscapes, which he usually painted quickly, on-site. He is predominantly known for his unidealized paintings of rural Utah; but he was also very productive in portraiture mural painting, drawing, etching, lithography, pastel, and design.

Source:
The Springville Museum of Art