Minerva Teichert

Minerva Bernetta Kohlhepp Teichert (August 28, 1888 – May 3, 1976) was a 20th-century American painter notable for her art depicting Western and Mormon subjects, including a collection of murals depicting scenes from the Book of Mormon. Teichert received her art education from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York. Teichert was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Other religious-themed artwork she is known for include ''Christ in a Red Robe'', ''Queen Esther'', and ''Rescue of the Lost Lamb''. Additionally, Teichert painted 42 murals related to stories in the Book of Mormon which reside in Brigham Young University's (BYU) Museum of Art. She was the first woman invited to paint a mural for an LDS Church temple.

Early life

Minerva Teichert was born on August 28, 1888, in Ogden, Utah Territory. She was the second of ten children born to Frederick John Kohlhepp, a railroad worker and rancher, and Mary Ella Hickman, a suffragette and pamphleteer. Teichert grew up on a ranch in Idaho, taking advantage of her upbringing by sketching horses and ranch life from a young age. Her mother gave her her first set of watercolors when she was just four years old. For entertainment, she acted out plays and helped her father work on the farm. She enjoyed riding her horse, and exploring and sketching scenes from nature. Both of her parents supported her creativity and imagination. She was named after her maternal grandmother, Minerva Wade Hickman, who was one of the wives of frontier lawman and express rider "Wild Bill" Hickman, and also a descendant of Colonial Governor Thomas Roberts of New Hampshire.

Teichert's mother was an educated woman, who attended the Sacred Heart Academy in Ogden, Utah, instructed in language, arts, and music. She was of English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, French, Belgian, Spanish, and German ancestry. Teichert's father had come from a wealthy German-immigrant Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts. He moved west as a young man in 1878. He hunted bison and bear, and worked on ranches near Buffalo, Wyoming and in the Powder River area. He drifted into Utah through Brown's Hole and the Uintah Basin, finally making it to the mining town of Stockton, Utah, southwest of the Salt Lake Valley. He was baptized into LDS Church in 1886. Fred and Mary married in 1887, and moved to Pocatello, Idaho, a few years later. Fred had sustained an eye injury while working in the railroad yards, which required the family to move frequently to various rural communities where they would open and run small shops. Due to the lack of schools in the area, Teichert and her siblings were frequently homeschooled, therefore Teichert did not receive a formal primary education.

She left Idaho at age 14 to be a nursemaid in San Francisco. It was in San Francisco that she saw an art museum for the first time. She also took some classes at the Mark Hopkins Art School. She returned home, and after graduating from Pocatello High School, she taught in Idaho to earn money to travel out east.

Chicago and New York education

Teichert studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under John Vanderpoel. While in Chicago, she became known as "Miss Idaho". She finished her courses in 1912 and returned to Indian Warm Springs, Idaho, to earn more money. During this time, she was courted by two young men. She also met her future husband, Herman Teichert. She left Herman and Idaho to pursue art. She then studied at the Art Students League of New York in 1914, where she studied under Robert Henri, George Bridgman, and Dimitri Romanoffski. Henri gave Minerva a scholarship and ranked her among his best three students. Minerva earned money for school by sketching cadavers for medical schools. She also illustrated children's books and performed rope tricks and Indian dances. She was known for a headband that she wore throughout her life, which may have come from these performances. Teichert was offered a scholarship to study in London, but instead returned home to get married.

In 1917, she returned to Idaho. On September 15, 1917, she married Herman Adolph Teichert. After their marriage, he left to fight in World War I. The couple had five children. Minerva spent most of her life on a ranch in Cokeville, Wyoming, while painting the things she knew and loved best: scenes from western Americana, and religious artwork expressing her deeply held convictions. During her early years of marriage, she sketched on scraps of wood and paper because there wasn't enough money to buy art supplies.

Career

Teichert painted throughout her life. She painted in her living room; while working on murals, she folded her canvas and used the large end of a pair of binoculars to look at her work in perspective. She once explained "I ''must'' paint", when asked about how she persisted in painting despite being in near-complete artistic isolation, without a dedicated studio or even much free time to create. Teichert was an independent, opinionated woman who stood up for women's rights and was an outspoken political conservative. She shared her talents with others and gave art lessons out of her home. In addition to her art career, she raised five children and took care of her homestead and ranch.

In 1947, Teichert won first prize in the LDS Church's centennial art contest and was the first woman to paint a mural for an LDS temple. In the mid-1940s, having achieved success painting murals, Teichert began painting a series of murals related to stories from the Book of Mormon. She originally considered making plays on the subject of the Book of Mormon, but instead made paintings. She used live models, costumes based on sketches she had done while traveling in Mexico, and painted backdrops. She gained inspiration through scholarly writers such as Hugh Nibley. Teichert painted over forty Book of Mormon murals. In the mid-1950s, she put the murals on slides for presentations. Despite wanting to put the murals in book form, this would not happen in her lifetime.

Style and works

Women and western themes feature prominently in Teichert's works, such as ''The Madonna of 1847'', which depicts a mother and child in a covered wagon, crossing the plains to settle in Utah. While Teichert painted over 400 murals, she is known for a set of 42 murals from the Book of Mormon, as well as her murals inside the Manti Utah Temple. She also painted murals for the church's tabernacle in Montpelier, Idaho. They were temporarily removed to make space for a heating system. The murals were returned during the tabernacle's renovation. Teichert's distinctive style can be seen in the painting ''Christ in the Red Robe'', in which women can be seen reaching out to Christ. He is depicted in a red robe at his second coming, referencing Isaiah. The colors are mostly subdued, except for the central figure who is brightly illustrated.

Teichert painted much of the clothing in her paintings with patterns, a detail unique to her paintings. She would also include the color red to add contrast. She often left the edges unfinished or just sketched. Many of her paintings are filled with the colors from the desert and feature distant mountains.
Teichert submitted many pieces of artwork to the church; however, during her lifetime, many of them were rejected. She gave several paintings to BYU to pay tuition for members of her family. Her works are prolifically displayed around the BYU campus. Several of her paintings can be seen in the Joseph Smith Building, the Wilkinson Student Center, and the Museum of Art. One of Teichert's most famous exhibits, "Pageants in Paint", has been on display in the Museum of Art. Several of Teichert's works are also on display on the campus of Brigham Young University–Idaho. Teichert's Book of Mormon murals are part of the collection at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art.

Church service

Teichert was a member of the LDS Church and her faith impacted the subjects of much of her work. She was the first woman sent on an art mission by the church, first to Chicago, and then to New York City before she attended the Art Students League. She served in various responsibilities in the church, including Primary president and on the Stake Sunday School Board. She also worked in the Young Women organization.

Her husband, Herman, was not a member of the church when the couple was married. He supported her activity in the church and donated tithing. He was later baptized in 1933. The couple was sealed the following year in the Logan Utah Temple. Minerva Teichert and her husband, Herman, had five children.

Teichert continued painting into her seventies. Due to a hip fracture from a fall in 1970, she had to stop painting. She entered a nursing home in 1973 and died in Provo, Utah, on May 3, 1976. She was buried in the Cokeville, Wyoming, cemetery.

Legacy

During Teichert's lengthy career, she is believed to have painted thousands of paintings. The Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah, currently owns two works by Teichert: "Battle of the Bulls", dated circa 1946, and "Market Girl", circa 1912. "Pioneers: Water Scene," from 1936, is in the collection of the Brigham City Museum.
Along with other renowned American artists of the twentieth-century, Teichert's work was featured in the semi-permanent exhibition "Becoming America" at BYU's Museum of Art from 2019 to 2022.

See also

* Mormon art

References

Further reading

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External links

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Minerva Teichert art websiteMinerva Kohlhepp Teichert personal and professional papers, MSS 2243
a
L. Tom Perry Special Collections
Brigham Young University
Antiques Roadshow Segment on PBS: 1959 Minerva Teichert "Cowboy with Sheep"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Teichert, Minerva
1888 births
1976 deaths
Art Students League of New York alumni
Painters from Utah
Latter Day Saints from Utah
Latter Day Saint artists
American Latter Day Saint artists
People from Lincoln County, Wyoming
Artists from Ogden, Utah
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
20th-century American painters
20th-century American women artists
Students of Robert Henri
American women painters
Latter Day Saints from Idaho
Latter Day Saints from California
Latter Day Saints from Illinois
Latter Day Saints from Wyoming
Harold B. Lee Library-related 20th century articles