Celebrating the stories of Latter-day Saint pioneer women through Minerva Teichert’s brushstrokes

The Great Salt Lake looms in the background as four Latter-day Saint pioneer women are depicted with a fresh harvest ready to negotiate a trade with their California neighbors who were in need of fresh food to avoid scurvy.

The painting greets visitors to the Minerva Teichert & Pioneer Women of Salt Lake exhibit at Anthony’s Fine Art in downtown Salt Lake City. It has the title “Utah Women Save the Day.” The gallery is housed in a historic church and at every turn there is some marvel, whether it be an ancient Roman mosaic or Louis Comfort Tiffany’s stained-glass window of “The Good Shepherd.”

Now the Minerva Teichert exhibit, complete with her work and the journals of Latter-day Saint pioneer women, transports visitors back in time to learn a thing or two about how these women shaped the West.

Strolling through the exhibit, art consultant and expert Micah Christensen tells me the scene Teichert painted is just a couple years after the Miracle of the Gulls. When Latter-day Saint pioneers settled in the Salt Lake Valley, they had difficulty growing crops, particularly in 1848. Crickets devoured their fields and they were were fearful they would not have food enough to survive. The gulls swept in, ate the crickets and saved the harvest.

The harvest the next year was better and coincided with the gold rush.

“Brigham Young had promised the Latter-day Saints when they arrived, that things would come to them in this isolated place in the valley,” said Christensen. “And here in this painting, we see Minerva painting a fulfillment of that prophecy.”

Latter-day Saint women pioneers had endured several moves across the country, fleeing religious persecution. As they moved, they could take little with them, only what would fit in small trunks. Christensen pointed toward those trunks, not much longer than the size of a typical desk.

“Even those they’re dividing amongst each other to have,” said Christensen.

The 49ers, those who came Westward for gold, were suffering from a lack of vitamin C and came to Latter-day Saint women pioneers to trade them cloth, furniture and ceramics — what many pioneers could not bring — for the fresh fruit and vegetables.

As Christensen emphasized, the women take the lead in negotiating.

“She’s got the sunset happening, the Great Salt Lake and she’s got the light shining on all the women,” said Christensen. “And instead of it being a negative interaction between the Gentiles and the Latter-day Saints, you’ve got women negotiating with one another.”

Teichert modeled the Latter-day Saint women pioneers after her own family members. But there may be a deeper personal connection.

As Christensen told it, there is an area called the Big Field that stretches throughout Salt Lake Valley where the pioneers planted crops. It is this field where the Miracle of the Gulls happened, and this field is also where Teichert painted the negotiation.

One of Teichert’s ancestors, Minerva Wade, was an early pioneer in the area. When Teichert painted her iconic Miracle of the Gulls painting, Wade was the subject. And Christensen said, several years later, Teichert was still thinking about this familial connection as she painted “Utah Women Save the Day.”

Teichert: A painter of every day women

Though Teichert was born in Ogden, she traveled east to Chicago and New York to study with renowned artists. Robert Henri, an influential American artist and as Christensen said, “decidedly not a Latter-day Saint,” taught Teichert and encouraged her to paint the story of her people.

“She took that on for entire career and focused it on every day experiences of women, and miraculous and large-scale stories,” said Christensen.

Christensen said Teichert is one of the highest-trained artists in the West of her generation and beforehand. One way he said you could see Teichert’s training is through her multifigural historical works. These kinds of paintings are difficult to do because of how much is involved in composing them: from the individual figures to making the painting cohesive.

“She masterfully creates a personality for each of the figures, each one is doing something,” said Christensen, referring back to “Utah Women Save the Day.” “But as you’re looking at the work, little signals pull you throughout the whole painting, so your attention doesn’t settle on just one.”

You know you are looking at the work of a great artist when you glean something new from it the more you look at it, he said. “I’ve lived with this painting now for about a month, every time I look at it, I’m pulled in by some other detail.”

“She’s one of the greatest muralists that we’ve ever had in the United States. Period,” Christensen said.

The goal of Teichert’s work more than anything was storytelling, said Christensen. It was not to create the photo-realistic painting.

When asked about what Teichert’s legacy as a painter was, Christensen pointed toward the long lines at the Manti Utah Temple. When the Manti Temple had its open house, people traveled from all over and stood outside for hours to tour the temple where her murals are.

“She has become the illustrator of our own view of who we are, of our own history, of our ancestors.”