LeConte Stewart (American, 1891–1990)
Green River Utah, June 1930
Oil on board
11 × 14 ½ in.
LeConte Stewart, born in Glenwood, Utah, studied at the University of Utah, the Art Students League of New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he absorbed both academic training and the influence of American Impressionism. Returning to Utah in the 1920s, he devoted himself to painting the local landscape with an unflinching honesty, often portraying unadorned farms, towns, and stretches of desert.
By 1930, Stewart was newly appointed chairman of the Art Department at the University of Utah, where he would shape generations of artists. Despite his academic duties, he maintained an extraordinary pace of painting outdoors, creating hundreds of studies that captured the fleeting light and moods of Utah’s terrain. Desert, June 1930 exemplifies this period, when Stewart was committed to portraying not the romanticized West, but its raw expanses, quiet isolation, and subtle grandeur. His career would span more than six decades, making him one of the most prolific and influential painters of the Intermountain West.
