Joseph Alma Freestone Everett was born Salt Lake City in 1884. He was a watercolorist, muralist, and teacher. He died in Salt Lake City in 1945.

Everett studied with James Harwood, John Hafen, and Lee Greene Richards in Salt Lake City. While serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he studied at the South Kensington School with E. A. Smith. He later studied in Paris and in New York City with the muralist Kenyon Cox.

Everett worked for a time as an engineer-draftsman for the Oregon Short Line Railroad, but continued to be a prolific painter. He sketched landscape watercolors and genre paintings—hospital patients receiving treatment and the razing of the Salt Lake Theater. Examples of his work are City Creek Canyon (1943), Main Street at South Temple, Salt Lake City (1940), and Old Salt Lake Theater(1943).

Biography adapted from Springville Museum of Art.

Joseph Alma Everett was a native Salt Laker whose parents had emigrated from England as L.D.S. converts. He studied with John Hafen, J.T. Harwood, L.G. Richards,and L.A. Ramsey; he went on to study watercolor with E.A. Smith at the Kensington School of Art, then under no particular master in Paris, and finally with muralist Kenyon Cox in New York. After this, Everett went to work for the Oregon Short Line Railroad in its Salt Lake Engineering department office as a draftsman. Nevertheless he pursued the more supple and portable medium of watercolor in his off hours to quickly apprehend chance occurrences in nature. In time, Everett gave up his job with the railroad when his department was transferred to Omaha, and made the attempt to support his family via the opening of a school. It was tough, but he managed by teaching at Lion House and also giving private lessons to children of such notables as President Heber J. Grant. He finally became successful enough that a Joseph Everett Art Society was founded by devoted students who wished to retain, through fellowship with former classmates, at least a small degree of what has existed in painting sessions conducted by the master.

 

Biography courtesy of Artists of Utah.

Newspaper Article

"2 Local Shows Reflect Both Subtle, Bold Moods." The Deseret News, April 2, 1989.

Books

Davenport, Ray. Davenport's Art Reference. Ventura, CA: Davenport's Art Reference, 2001.

Dawdy, Doris. Artists of the American West: A Biographical Dictionary. Chicago, IL: Sage Books, 1990.

Dunbier, Lonnie Pierson. ed. The Artists Bluebook: 29,000 North American Artists. Scottsdale, AZ: AskART.com, 2003.

Falk, Peter Hastings. Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975: 400 Years of Artists in America. Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1999.

Falk, Peter Hastings. Who Was Who in American Art: Compiled from the Original Thirty-four Volumes of American Art Annual--Who's Who in Art, Biographies of American Artists Active from 1898-1947. Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1985.

Fielding, Mantle, and Glenn B. Opitz. ed. Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers. 2nd ed. Poughkeepsie, NY: Apollo, 1986.

Haseltine, James L. 100 Years of Utah Painting: Selected Works from the 1840s to the 1940s. Salt Lake, UT: Salt Lake Art Center, 1965.

Mallett, Daniel Trowbridge. Index of Artists, International-Biographical; Including Painters, Sculptors, Illustrators, Engravers and Etchers of the Past and the Present. New York, NY: Peregrine Smith, 1948.

Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. Artists of Utah. Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999.

Opitz, Glenn B. ed. Dictionary of American sculptors: "18th Century to the Present," Illustrated With over 200 Photographs. Poughkeepsie, NY: Apollo, 1984.

Samuels, Peggy and Harold Samuels. The Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976.

Swanson, Vern G., Robert S. Olpin, and William C. Seifrit. Utah Painting and Sculpture. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1991.

Swanson, Vern G., Robert S. Olpin, Donna Poulton, and Janie Rogers. 150 Years Survey Utah Art, Utah Artists. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 2001.