Not Alone
Minerva Teichert (1888–1976) | oil on canvas | 89 3/4" x 114 1/3" | 1920
Not Alone after 2021 conservation treatment.
Mary Fielding Smith, widow of martyred Hyrum Smith, resolved to join the migrating Latter-day Saints west. Despite being told she would be a burden to the team, Smith stoically marched with her young children to the Salt Lake Valley. Teichert paints Mary holding the hand of her young son Joseph Fielding Smith and leading a team of oxen. Despite wolves that cross her path, Mary is not afraid; she is escorted by a host of heavenly messengers to guide and protect her.
Conservation Notes
Not Alone during 2021 conservation treatment. © Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts/WCCFA.
Teichert painted Not Alone in 1920. One hundred years later, the Church hired conservators at the Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts to conserve the painting before it was moved to the Latter-day Saint temple in Pocatello, Idaho. To decide how to conserve the painting, conservators used scientific, historical, artistic, and anthropological information.
Conservation and Science
An oil painting is made up of three layers—a canvas, a primer, and oil paint. These three layers all react differently to changing humidity levels. In Not Alone, this resulted in dangerous tenting as the paint layer began to separate from its primer layer. Conservators used a heat table to soften the paint and reattach it.
Not Alone, detail, viewed in raking light. © Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts/WCCFA.
Conservation and History
Conservators try to be true to an artist’s intent when preserving a painting. When creating Not Alone, Teichert stitched together two canvases to create one very large canvas. To preserve this history, conservators decided to leave visible the prominent seam down the center of the painting.
Teichert did not like to varnish her murals after they were completed, explaining in a 1948 note to Church leaders, “[Varnish] cracks in time, also it shines.” Sometime in its history, the painting had been varnished, and to be true to Teichert’s intent, conservators removed as much of the varnish as was safe.
Conservator removes varnish from Not Alone during conservation treatment. © Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts/WCCFA.
Conservation and Art
Damage from previous treatment, temperature and humidity fluctuations, and human accidents can cause areas of paint to flake off a painted canvas. At some point, such loss on Not Alone was repaired by someone painting over and far beyond the areas of damage. This overpaint was removed, and conservators applied removable paint only to the areas that were damaged. This required the conservators to have some of the same skills of artists: they needed to be able to match Teichert’s original colors and original strokes.
Conservator fills in areas of paint loss on Not Alone. © Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts/WCCFA.
Conservation and Anthropology
As conservators preserve objects, they think through what those objects mean to a community and take care of them in respectful ways. Many Latter-day Saint paintings have hung in several locations and moved as buildings have been repurposed and restructured. However, art in Latter-day Saint spaces can be beloved by the local community. Not Alone was commissioned to hang in a Pocatello chapel in 1920 and was moved to a different Pocatello chapel in 1966. The Church decided that it could better control the painting’s physical environment and honor local Latter-day Saints by moving Not Alone to the new Pocatello Temple.
Not Alone in the Pocatello Temple.