Edwin Evans (1860-1946),Grain Fields, c.1890, oil on canvas, 38 3/4 x 57 7/8 inches. Brigham Young University Museum of Art, 1941.
One of a small number of “art missionaries,” sent to Paris to study from European masters in the late nineteenth century, Edwin Evans is best remembered for painting murals in the Salt Lake and Cardston, Alberta temples for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. This canvas, painted while he was in Paris, not only demonstrates the artist’s talent, but promotes a theme of the wise cultivation of natural resources, and the reaping of a rich harvest after dedicated labor. This work is currently on exhibition in Becoming America, through January 2022.