A self-taught artist, Lambourne emigrated from England, joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and traveled west to Utah. Once in Utah, he left the safety of the mountains in 1887 to homestead at Great Salt Lake’s Gunnison Island. There, he wrote a book and painted landscapes of the saline filled lake.
Fast-forward 127 years. Today, Lambourne’s oil paintings remain relevant, and to showcase his importance as an artist, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts has planned an exhibition displaying his work. Set to premiere Friday, “The Savage Poem Around Me: Alfred Lambourne’s Great Salt Lake” pairs the artist’s two talents — writing and painting.
“As you’re going through the exhibit, you can see the poetry alongside looking at the art,” said Virginia Catherall, UMFA curator of education. “They are both juxtaposed together so that it gives you a good sense of who this man really was. Not only that, it also gives you a sense of the Great Salt Lake as his muse.”
The collection opens with the beginning of Lambourne’s book “Our Inland Sea: The Story of a Homestead.” It closes with narrative from the end of the book. Printed on vinyl, the exhibit displays the words, “Ghostly, wrapped in its shroud of snow, my island stands white above the blackness of unfreezing waters. What have I done? Although I had lived these days by anticipation, no sooner had the sails of the departing yacht vanished below the watery horizon … then I realized at once, and with a strange sinking of the heart, how more intense, indeed, how deeper than all imagining, is the wildness and desolation of the savage poem around me.”
From descriptive poetry to embellished scenes of shipwrecks, Lambourne romanticized the Great Salt Lake. Wanting to take a homestead and claim the land by living off it for two to three months, it is no surprise he became entranced by its winter weather and harsh terrain. In fact, the Great Salt Lake bewildered many LDS pioneers.
“A lot of the early pioneers looked to mountains as a place for refuge, as well as a place for food and water,” Catherall said. “The lake was something they had not experienced. It was this strange [and] otherworldly [place].”
The transition from contemporary art overtaking the UMFA to old-time painters is a daunting task. Aside from tourists, no one visits the Great Salt Lake. Now joining the travelers are modern artists obsessed with filming the geography of Lambourne’s inland sea. Combining the different art mediums, the UMFA is screening two films on the Great Salt Lake.
“Even today we have some contemporary artists who see this lake as this strange and alien landscape, and are inspired to create something just like he was over 100 years ago,” Catherall said. “It’s just that Lambourne did it in the medium of his day, which was painting in the romantic style, and the artists we are showing concurrently are doing it the medium of today.”
Tacita Dean’s “JG” is a 35mm film focusing on the Salt Flats and the artwork “Spiral Jetty.” Moving from a bygone era’s style of filming to the high-resolution trend of today, the other current exhibit scans over the Great Salt Lake.
From new genres to old-style creations, “The Savage Poem Around Me: Alfred Lambourne’s Great Salt Lake” encourages viewers to keep time and setting in mind.
“I would urge viewers to consider the context of time. These artists didn’t have paint that was in tubes. They were making their own paint. They had to use berries to make red, ochre from the ground to make yellows and browns and they had to use animal fat as their binder,” said Donna Poulton, UMFA curator.