An unlucky and forgotten Utah painter's life is a lesson on caring for local art.
The Bigger Picture
Some people just can't catch a break. And for some unlucky few, misfortune trails them even after they have shuffled off from their mortal coil.
Take William Joseph Armitage, for example. An academically trained artist from London, he relocated to Salt Lake City in 1881, but demand for his skill was limited. By 1885, Armitage tried his luck in San Francisco, alternately living in town on meager means with his son Arthur or at a cottage adjacent to the old Cliff House resort on Lands End. Wishing to finish a painting he was working on at the resort in 1890 before his planned return to Utah, Armitage was "attacked with a coughing and choking," the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Nov. 15, "lasting several minutes and resulting in death."
And still this man, even as he was subsequently remembered by the Deseret News as "an amiable and talented gentleman," had yet to find full respect in this world—right to his grave.
Following his funeral service at the old Fifteenth Ward building in Salt Lake City, the mourners escorted Armitage's hearse down South Temple for burial, only to be met by a steamroller moving in the opposite direction, its engineer neither stopping or slowing down before the procession.
"The horses that drew Grant Bros.' costly hearse were the first to take fright and plunged over the terrace that divides the thoroughfare," reported the Salt Lake Times on Nov. 20. "The coffin that had been placed within the glassy confines with such marked solemnity was tossed around from one side to another, wreaths were relentlessly torn and crushed and it is the sole matter of congratulation that the dead was not hurled to the ground."
Finally stopping the steamroller before anyone was injured, the anonymous engineer apparently incensed the crowd further by responding to the close call with "a toothly, heartless smile."
Such disrespect seemed to be a recurring theme in William Armitage's life, only to be compounded further in subsequent generations by the mishandling of his work and the occasional natural disaster—for if fire didn't erase his creations, the dumpster would.
"At the time of his death in that California city in November of 1890," remarked art historian Robert S. Olpin in a 1988 lecture at the University of Utah, "any precise knowledge of the Armitage life and works seems to have disappeared with the artist's own passing, and this early Utah painter is today a very shadowy figure whose works have largely been lost."
After carefully combing through every available printed and living resource, City Weekly is pleased to dispel even a few of those shadows by providing some long-overdue attention to a unique talent. Who knows? Maybe some surviving examples of his work will be rediscovered somewhere in the world as a consequence.
That would be a start, anyway.
Probationary Period
William Armitage was born Feb. 16, 1820, in the Deptford area of southeast London to Thomas Armitage and Mary Wier. Little is known of his familial background, or the circumstances of his artistic beginnings, but his name appears in the student admittance sheet of the Royal Academy of Art School for Dec. 7, 1836, as a teenage entrant.
While art was a well-established profession in Victorian England, there were numerous avenues the aspiring artist could pursue if one wished to become a professional, from courses at local studios and tutelage in workshops to private instruction at home. The most important and exacting of them all, however, was the Royal Academy (RA)—one of the few formal art teaching schools in London at that time.
Open to anyone, free of tuition and without age limits, competition to get into the Academy was indeed tough.
"To be considered for admittance, potential students had to submit a drawing or series of drawings of a classical Greek sculpture," RA Librarian Adam Waterton explained via email. "If the Keeper (director) of the Schools and the Academicians felt that the drawing showed potential, the student was admitted as a Probationer."
Waterton explained that after achieving probationary status, a prospective student would then spend another three months drawing from casts of classical sculptures held in the RA schools.
"If their drawings were considered good enough after three months they were admitted as full students," he said. "The period of study in the 1830s was around six years."
Armitage exhibited his painting "Queen Esther" at the RA's summer exhibition of 1840, reappearing within available public record in 1849 when he exhibited "Jesus Wept" before the British Institution, a private art society. Showcasing another work there in 1852 entitled "Christ Mocked," the Art Journal nevertheless sniffed its disapproval: "The work is deficient in force, character, and minor indispensable qualities."
After marrying Rosa Bleeze (1828-1911) in the early 1850s, it is unclear precisely when Armitage converted to Mormonism, although his wife's baptismal records date to the summer of 1852. They ultimately had eight children together and moved around London frequently.
Listed in the 1861 census as a "teacher of drawing," Armitage almost assuredly took up pupils either in a formal school setting or as a private instructor on top of his exhibitions and sales. Primarily a painter of religious and mythological subjects (with a smattering of portraiture and nature studies), he still had a difficult time of finding an appreciative audience.
The Illustrated London News, for instance, panned Armitage's enormous 1863 painting on the Apocalypse of St. John by comparing him unfavorably with the artists John Martin, Francis Danby and Edward Armitage (no relation).
"It is sad to see so much labour with a result so inadequate," the reviewer pronounced. "The picture may obtain more popularity in the provinces than it can possibly win in the metropolis."
With his eldest daughter Annie the first of the family to depart for America in 1872 (with help from the Latter-day Saint Perpetual Emigration Fund), the others appeared to be engaged with their church unit in London's Wandsworth area, with Armitage operating as a church elder and for a time as his branch's Sunday School teacher.
By May 2 of 1881, however, William and Rosa, along with two of their sons, were among the list of passengers sailing from Liverpool aboard the S.S. Wyoming.
Leaving London's population of almost 4 million, the Armitages were off to give Salt Lake City's "province" of 21,000 a try instead.
Local Color
Beginning with William Major and William Ward in the 1850s, Utah's fine art scene developed in the following decades with great difficulty, despite the patronage of both The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Salt Lake Theatre.
The respective arrivals of artists like C.C.A. Christensen (1831-1912), Dan Weggeland (1827-1918), Alfred Lambourne (1850-1926) and George Ottinger (1833-1917) were influential, but still there remained inadequate exhibition space around town and insufficient funds from locals to fully support the profession. Consequently, none of these men could paint full-time, all being obliged to work in additional trades and take on odd jobs.
This was a frequent concern across the pages of Ottinger's personal journal, remarking in one passage that Utahns "as a general thing like pictures and admire them but they have no money to spend for them," with the exception of the rich—who did not generally show up. Well-connected in Salt Lake City and involved with earlier efforts to establish fine arts in Utah, Ottinger was inclined to lend a hand to others of his profession.
"Mr. William Armitage, an artist and drawing master from London, has come to reside in our city as a teacher of drawing—he may manage to make a living," Ottinger confided to his journal in May of 1881. "I am afraid the future will be a hard experience for him, not harder than he has had in London if all be true that I have heard. I have interested myself in his behalf as much as possible, introducing him to the manager of the University and urging him and the board of Regents to organize drawing classes in their institution, as well as finding a few pupils in a private way for him."
By the end of that month, Armitage was receiving students in oil, drawing and watercolor instruction through Charles R. Savage's Art Bazaar. By the fall, he was simultaneously teaching classes at the University of Deseret and at Rowland Hall as well as preparing what would be an award-winning set of works for the biggest artistic venue of the year—the Territorial Fair.
Praising Armitage's entry, entitled "He Shall Wipe away all Tears," in the Salt Lake Herald-Republican, the reviewer "Xenophanes" remarked that "In [the depicted woman's] face the artist had thrown his soul; he had not painted, but created it: leaving it full of feeling, almost flesh and blood." His portraits of John Thaxter White (1858-1933) and the father of a local Studebaker Wagon agent received similarly high marks from both patrons and the awarding committee.
Armitage thus entered upon his best-documented period, being among the founding members of the short-lived Utah Art Association and painting well-received works for individuals and institutions alike. Under the sponsorship of the Art Association, an historic exhibition was carried out at the McKenzie Reform Club Hall on First South in the winter of 1881, showcasing local artistic talent as well as rare treasures from Salt Lake collectors.
To the delight of the Salt Lake Daily Herald on Dec. 23, the showcase was "much finer than was in any way anticipated," becoming more popular as it went on until its close on Jan. 21, 1882.
"It is important to note that this exhibition was the first freestanding exhibition of Utah artists in the brief history of the territory," wrote Vern Swanson, Robert Olpin and William Seifrit for the book Utah Painting and Sculpture (1997), "that is, the first exhibit organized, designed, installed, and managed by the artists themselves, utterly independent of the [territorial] fair, retail businesses, or any other organization or activity."
But due to a prolonged and nearly fatal illness, Armitage could not savor the success of the exhibition, and his artist friends raffled off some of his paintings to support him. Exhibiting work at various venues around town—most notably in whiskey wholesaler George Meears' storefront window space called "The Easel"—Armitage was one of many artists seeking opportunities to bring their work to the public's attention.
The Armitage style, as Olpin explained in 1988, "was essentially a late neoclassical approach to figures and composition more in tune with the 18th century work of the Anglo-American Benjamin West than that of contemporary Victorian English practitioners." He favored an "eclectic" approach to pose and composition, often employing the theatrical "Grand Manner" of heroic action and/or suffering.
From what can be judged by his surviving output, Armitage was less a naturalist and more academic in his approach, in keeping with his Royal Academy training.
Surviving Works
Obtaining the plumb commission of painting interior pictures with Dan Weggeland for the Logan Temple in 1883, Armitage departed for the northern Utah city and turned a room within the historic Cache County Courthouse (199 N. Main St, Logan) into his temporary studio.
"Logan is a charming spot," he later told the Salt Lake Herald-Republican on Oct. 3, 1884, "it reminds me more of the quiet old English villages than any place I have been in. If there were a little more money in circulation, I know of no city where I should prefer to live."
At the Logan Temple, he provided two large paintings of Jesus Christ (both lost to a 1917 fire), and from his makeshift studio, he produced two of the three Armitage paintings whose whereabouts are still known today.
One came at the instruction of LDS Church President John Taylor, reproducing the historical event of "Joseph Smith Preaching to the Indians," while the other is a depiction of a scene from The Book of Mormon entitled "The Resurrected Christ Instructing Nephites." Both later found their separate ways into the interior decorating scheme of the Salt Lake Temple—which may be the sole reason both have survived.
Following these high-profile jobs, Armitage took three of his works to the 1885 Industrial Exhibition of the Mechanics' Institute in San Francisco and received a diploma for his efforts. He showcased another work there the following year and appeared to live primarily in San Francisco until his death (with the exception of a reappearance to Salt Lake City directories in 1888 when he returned to the Armitage home on Third North and First West).
Arriving too late to be fully included among Utah's artistic pioneers and too early to be grouped with its second generation, Armitage was nevertheless remembered as skilled by those who knew him. While his time in Utah only spanned a handful of years, he made enough of an impact that artist Minerva Teichert (1888-1976), in a 1968 interview with a Brigham Young University student, could assert that Armitage was "a grand old man who knew more about art than all the rest of them."
So why do so few of his works survive today?
"It happens," Vern Swanson told City Weekly in a recent interview. Swanson, an art historian and the former director of the Springville Museum of Art, points to the French artist Charles Bargue (1825-1883) as a typical example of a non-prolific artist whose work is known by only a limited number of pieces.
Was Armitage's output limited? It's hard to say. We have, after all, only been able to catalog roughly 35 separate works of his from available sources. Then again, plenty of his paintings likely passed along unmentioned by the press and outside of auction houses. Fires have also played their part, as with the losses of Savage's Art Bazaar in Utah and the Cliff House in California.
But carelessness is likely the biggest contributor.
Holding On
Upon hearing that Armitage's 1869 work "Abraham Instructing Isaac" came up for auction twice in 2008, Swanson sprang into action and purchased it himself, subsequently donating it to the Springville Museum's permanent collection. "I was very, very fortunate," he said.
Swanson knows how precious such works can be, having received many reports over the last 50 years of his career involving paintings in public schools and buildings that have been thrown into dumpsters and furnaces rather than being preserved. Swanson wonders just how many works of art—particularly by Utah's early, more archaic painters—have been lost over the years as a result.
One such memory that lingers with him involved a picture archive undertaken by the old Salt Lake City Library to document visual art from across the state. With the move to a new building in 2003, Swanson recalled, the library staff had no room for the sizable picture archive. But before anything could be digitized, the entire collection was summarily thrown away.
"It hurt Utah's art history considerably," Swanson said of the loss. Consequently, he remains wary about how Utah handles and appreciates its creative works. "I don't trust everybody with art," Swanson concluded.
And even if accumulated hazards and heedlessness have conspired with the steady erasure of time to blot out much of what we can know and appreciate about artists like William Armitage, perhaps Utahns can benefit from the cautionary tale of his life—just not in the ways one might think.
William Armitage, after all, spent a lifetime doing what he loved, creating beauty in his own manner—and that by most standards would be measured as success. The real tragedy is how such works are treated after they leave the artists' hands. And there are countless artists of varying shapes, sizes and mediums today who could benefit from our re-learning this lesson.
Before it's too late.
My thanks to the authour. Wes Long who kindly gave his permission to post his
written history of William Armitage
Link to his article
https://www.cityweekly.net/utah/an-unlucky-and-forgotten-utah-painters-life-is-a-lesson-on-caring-for-local-art/Content?oid=22068441
