George Beard (artist)

Beard was involved both professionally and personally in the Coalville community. He ran the Coalville Cooperative Mercantile Institution for 73 years, all the way until his death.[1] He served as the mayor of Coalville from 1891 to 1892 and was elected for one term for the first Utah State Legislature in 1895.[3] During his time in the legislature, he was on and eventually became the chairman of the committee that created the Utah State Seal.[4] Beard also served as a choir and musical director for the Coalville Opera House.[1][5]

Beard's religion continued to be a pillar in his life into his adulthood. He served as a bishop for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and raised his children as members of the church.[1]

Lake archival pigment print by Beard from the 1920s

"Dead Horse Point" painting by Beard

Beard's artistic endeavors began in his childhood, under the eye of his mother who was also loved art. His first paintings, created before his family immigrated, were watercolor paintings.[6] While traveling to Utah in 1868, Beard and his siblings made a stop at Niagara Falls, which was incredibly influential later on in his artwork.[2] He later wrote that, "If I have the soul of an artist, it was born while there".[6] Early influences and inspiration for Beard's work included the work of Utah-based artists Carl Anderson and George M. Ottinger.[7] Thomas Moran also served as an influence for Beard's developing style.[1] Despite this, he was mostly self-taught.[2] His style is described at as Romantic, which is shown through the dramatic proportions meant to show emotion in his landscape paintings of the Uintas Mountains.[8] Ehren Clark, writing at 15 Bytes, described his paintings, along with his photographs, as having "that spirit of divinity of the unforeseeable in nature".[6]

Beard informally studied photography under Charles R. Savage, a prominent landscape photographer in Utah at the time.[9] Beard used a Tele-Photo Cycle-Poco camera that he named "Alice" to take pictures.[10] The primary goal of his photographs was to serve as inspiration for his paintings.[5] Beard's daughter, Edna Beard Taylor, described her father as being "untiring in his photography. He would wait for hours for certain light and cloud effects".[6] His work was considered "of excellent artistic value" by Nelson Wadsworth, a photographic historian and professor at BYU.[7] According to Herman du Toit, former Head of Museum Research at BYU's Museum of Art, Beard's photographs demonstrated his skill, being carefully composed to have "a balance of light and shade".[10] His success in photography could be attributed to the dramatic changes in the medium in the late 1800s. The dry-plate negative, along with other photography innovations, made the process faster, easier, and cheaper to mass-produce. Portable darkrooms were also no longer necessary as film did not need to be developed immediately.[5] Beard's embrace of this new glass plate technology allowed him to take pictures of and document Coalville throughout five decades.[2] Despite his success in photography and painting, he did not pursue a career in art and it remained a passionate pastime for him.[9] Beard accumulated upwards of 1,500 glass plate negatives throughout his lifetime.[7]