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Show Nauvoo painting on display at Museum of Church History ByQUIG NIELSEN A small oil painting titled "Icarian Community, 1859, Nauvoo, Illinois " can now be seen in the new historical exhibit at the LDS Museum of Church History and Art in downtown Salt Lake City. The painting, on a 13x 10 sheet of metal, was done by Johann Schroeder, who had arrived in Nauvoo about 12 years after the Mormons had gone. Schroeder was so intrigued by the Nauvoo half-destroyed half-destroyed temple and what else remained re-mained of the town that he preserved preserv-ed it as he saw it in oil. Schroeder was an immigrant from Germany and a professionally trained artist. The Icarians.a 19th-century 19th-century communal society founded by a French social reformer, had taken over Nauvoo and had purchased pur-chased the Nauvoo temple to adapt to their own uses. However, a fire in 1 848 and a windstorm in 1 850 had Schroeder probably made informal sketches onsite near Montrose, Iowa, across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo, then returned to his home to complete the work. The museum acquired the original oil painting in 1976 from Mrs. Martha Lemme, whose husband's relatives lived for a time in Nauvoo. Another of Schroeder's paintings, pain-tings, "View of Nauvoo" was published pub-lished as an illustration of a "Map of Hancock County, Illinois, 1859. bv publishers J.W. Holmes almost completely destroyed the temple. Only the front section containing con-taining an entrance way and stairwells remained. Robert O. Davis, a senior art curator cu-rator at the museum, suggests that and C.R. Arnold in Chicago. Source: LDS Museum of Church History and Art records. (Quig Nielsen is an information officer for the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City.) |