page_title: John Hafen
section_title: Return to Utah
hierarchical_section_title: John Hafen / Career / Return to Utah
caption_attribution_description: The Mountain Stream
context_page_description: John Hafen was an American artist, primarily of landscapes and portraits. As a child, Hafen immigrated to the United States from Switzerland and settled in Utah. There, he demonstrated artistic abilities from an early age. In 1890, he was one of a group of "art missionaries" who studied at the Académie Julian in Paris under the sponsorship of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in preparation for painting murals at the nearly completed Salt Lake Temple. After returning home, Hafen painted landscapes of rural Utah and portraits of LDS General Authorities. He suffered intense financial difficulty throughout his life and did not receive much recognition as an artist until a few years before his death. He has been named "Utah's greatest artist" by Alice Merrill Horne and "is now considered the most appealing of the early Utah stylists."
context_section_description: Hafen was the first of his group to begin work at the Temple, playing a major role in the initial mural planning. He painted studies on canvas in preparation for painting the murals. Hafen began work on the walls of the garden room in 1892, and soon wrote to the other art missionaries, petitioning their return and assistance in painting the murals. He subsequently had the help of Fairbanks, Pratt, Evans, and Hafen's old mentor, Weggeland. Working together, the team finished the garden and world room murals in time for the temple's opening.
  Hafen continued to paint following his return home, and opened up a studio of his own in Springville, where he exhibited his depictions of the rural Utah landscape from the mid-1890s until 1907. He won the 1893 Utah Art Institute Exhibition prize of $300. He also became the vice president of the Society of Utah Artists that year. His works were displayed at the organization's 1896 exhibit, and he was called "one of the best portrait artists in the west." In 1899 he was awarded third prize in the Utah Art Institute competition for his work entitled North Fork Provo Canyon. 
  After his experience in Paris, Hafen missed being so far from the center of the art world. Both this longing to be working among other artists and continuing financial distress inspired Hafen to leave Utah. In 1900 he decided to travel to the coast, first to Seattle and then to Pacific Grove, California. At his first stop, he encountered artists less skilled but more commercially successful than himself. At the second, he completed fifteen paintings and six drawings in twenty-six days, some of which were landscapes of the ocean; the artist reportedly became "enamored with painting the sea." Then, without receiving the cash or connections he'd come for, Hafen returned to Utah.
  Weighed down by debt, Hafen asked for financial assistance from the LDS Church. He signed a contract with President Lorenzo Snow in 1901 to paint a certain number of landscapes and portraits each month in return for $100. Some of these portraits depicted LDS General Authorities and were "accepted as being satisfactory" by the Church. With this support and income, Hafen was able to travel again. His lifelong friend John Fairbanks accompanied him to New York and Boston. Misfortune followed him east, and he again returned home without the recognition he sought. Over the years, Hafen painted an estimated 200 works for the Church, including Girl Among the Hollyhocks, which has been commended as "a masterpiece of American Impressionism."
  Upon his return to Utah, Hafen saw small bits of success, such as having Heber J. Grant purchase one of his paintings for $250. In 1903, after attending an art lecture at Brigham Young Academy, Hafen decided to donate his painting entitled Mountain Stream to Springville High School in an effort to inspire a new generation of artists in that community. He again won the Utah Art Institute prize that year as well.
caption: Mountain Stream (1903)
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