Between 1860 and 1863, three painters, George Martin Ottinger (1833-1917), Daniel Weggeland (1829-1918), and John Tullidge (1826-99), were brought to Utah and employed at painting scenery for the Salt Lake Theater, and later, murals for the ceremonial chambers of Mormon temples. These 3 men, though they came from New England, Norway, and England, respectively, had all matured in the same general tradition. Ottinger received his instruction under teachers imbued with the precepts of the Hudson River School of Landscape. His work is literal and often quite static, but his enthusiasm for legendary subjects keeps interest in his work fresh and usually stirs the curiosity of those who have not known his paintings before. Weggeland, Tullidge, and Ottinger banded together in 1863, and organized the Deseret Academy of Fine Arts, the first such school in the West; they were forced by a lack of paying students to close their doors within a few months. Weggeland, reporting the enterprise in a letter home, said that he could occasionally dispose of a painting or a lesson for a few home-knit socks or a basket of onions, but that without his commissions for the Salt Lake Theater he would never have been able to pay his rent.
