Helaman’s Striplings / Samuel the Lamanite

Description

Helaman’s Striplings / Samuel the Lamanite

Minerva Teichert, 1949-1951

After receiving a farewell and the shield of faith from their mothers, these young Lamanite men turn in sequence to walk uprightly before God and march in harmony with their fellows. Arches overhead reinforce the sense of their unity. In their own convert families they don’t have weapons, so each is ceremonially armed by the prophet Helaman.

Another Lamanite shielded by great faith, Samuel is protected from arrows, spears, and stones as he prophesies to the Nephites. Teichert visualizes the protective power around Samuel as heavenly rays of light. An opposing, but lesser power as well as a sense of motion is conveyed by the trail of light behind the spear. The flight angles of the spear and arrow direct our eyes to the prophet’s right hand. It is centered in the embrasure.

He has stretched forth his hand in an allusion to the signs of the crucifixion in Christ’s hands. Samuel’s mission is to deliver the signs of both Christ’s birth and death. Teichert equates Samuel with a noble savage coming out of the wild jungle adorned with earrings and a blanket, his hair dressed in a braid. (Book of Mormon: Alma 53: 16-18, 20-21 and 56: 47-48)

More About Teichert

The works of western American artist, Minerva Teichert, have received increasingly popular and critical acclaim in recent years. Today, the LDS community loves Teichert. She is a woman who successfully combined both faith and family and left an extraordinary legacy of artistic production.

Minerva Kohlhepp was born in North Ogden, but grew up homestead farming in the vicinity of American Falls, Idaho. Her father encouraged her childhood sketching. Soon, she developed an “indomitable will to succeed and excel in the field of art.” She taught school to raise enough money to go to Chicago for her art studies.

She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Art Students League of New York in the early 1900s. There, mural paintings and theatrical pageants were dynamic components of American popular culture. Teichert embraced these art forms. Following the admonition of her art teacher – the American realist painter Robert Henri – she used the visual language these murals provided to tell the narrative of her religious heritage as well as that of the American West.

Helaman’s Striplings / Samuel the Lamanite is part of our Pageants in Paint exhibition.