John Willard Clawson was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1858.  A nationally known portrait painter he studied with the impressionist masters of his time. He died in Salt Lake City in 1936.

George Ottinger, his instructor at the University of Deseret, encouraged him to study in New York.  In 1881, Clawson began a three-year course of study at the National Academy of Design in New York.  In 1891, he began his study at the Académie Julian in Paris where his instructors were Constant, Laurens, and Lefebre.  Clawson had further study at the École des Beaux Arts under Edouard Manet and Claude Monet, the impressionist masters. Clawson studied with Julius Stewart, an American colorist.  The influences of impressionism are evident in Clawson’s works. He uses warm, bright colors and thickly applied paint to portray his subjects. 

When he returned to the United States, he had commissions for portraits in Utah, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Throughout his career, Clawson painted celebrities, prominent society figures, and leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints including his grandfather, Brigham Young.

Clawson opened a studio in San Francisco, but the 1906 earthquake destroyed his studio and many of his paintings.  He moved to Los Angeles, and then to New York, and back to Southern California. Having always wanted to paint landscapes, he returned to Salt Lake City in 1933.  Portrait of Matthew Henry Walker (1923) and Plein-Air Landscape of Southern California (1925) are examples of his work.

Biographical information on this page was adapted from the Springville Museum of Art.