| Date: | no inscribed date but said to be circa 1884 (see Note) |
| Medium: | oil on canvas |
| Size: | 14 x 22 in (36 x 56 cm) |
| Inscription: | l/l "F. Schafer", in the artist's characteristic block-letter hand |
| Verso: | said to be "Salt Lake City, Utah, Morning" |
| Provenance: | In private collection, Castro Valley, California, by 1974; offered in 1979 by North Point Gallery, San Francisco. Sold 21 January 1981 for $1650 by Butterfield & Butterfield, San Francisco, as lot 177 in sale 3132A to WIM Fine Arts, Oakland, California; sold 18 April 1981 by WIM Fine Arts to The Museum of Church History and Art (public). |
| Exhibited: | Masterworks from the Collection of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City, July 1985 |
| Reproductions: | Butterfield & Butterfield 21 January 1981 sale catalog; Inventory of American Paintings… record 71060295, S2.96 UR/1; Early California and Western Art Research/Schafer slide #55 (color, 1981); 1985 exhibition catalog, figure 8; William K. Dick photo #51 (color, 1979); WIM Fine Arts photo #1117 (color); Olpin, Robert S. et al., Painters of the Wasatch Mountains, page 32 (color). |
| Site: | Looking south from a point on the hillside directly north of the center of Salt Lake City, Utah. |
| Description: | The viewer looks across the city to a Wasatch Mountain backdrop consisting of a nearer brownish range rising to the left and a more distant and larger, snow-topped range across the center. The sun, off the canvas to the left, casts morning shadows under a bright blue sky. The Mormon tabernacle is in the right middle; a large, windowed white building (the Mormon temple, before addition of its towers) is just to the left of the tabernacle. These buildings, and the remainder of the city, occupy a small proportion of the painting. A brown desert slope filled with grass and brush rises in the left foreground, while an apparently empty valley stretches beyond the city. There is a small, unidentified, red structure at the left center on the desert slope. (From a color photograph.) |
| Note: | The date, from the 1985 exhibition catalog, is said to be based on the state of completion of the temple. |
| Identification: | Title from the reported verso inscription. The 1974 Inventory of American Paintings gives the title simply as Salt Lake City, and describes a painting that is 13.5 x 21 by sight, with the subject "Architecture-Church/Landscape-Mountain". The several similarities suggest that it is the same painting. The Early California and Western Art Research index identifies the slide with the 21 January 1981 sale and also identifies the Masterworks exhibition and the LDS Museum as owner. |
| Other title(s): | Morning, Salt Lake City, Utah (1981 sale catalog) |
| In index(es): | Title list, miscellaneous other well-known landmarks, Wasatch Mountains, paintings currently held in museums and public collections, dated paintings |
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