Rendered in a speckled, almost pointallist style, George Beard’s painting of Witch Rocks was created in 1911, forty-three years after the artist settled in Summit County. The formations— some rising fifty feet out of the smooth hillside in Echo Canyon— were an impressive greeting committee for the early settlers who travelled along the Mormon trail as they made their way to their new homes. Many pioneers wrote about the rocks in their journals, how they looked like clusters of witches wearing cloaks and hats. The painting also features two trains rolling through the canyon. The artist, who lived in Summit County for nearly a half century, witnessed all manner of changes to the valley that lay below the famous rock formations. The painting is of Witch Rocks, but it’s perhaps just as much a glimpse of the artist’s own life in Echo Canyon.
One of Summit County’s first notable artists, George Beard was born December 21, 1854 in Whaley Bridge, in Derbyshire, England not far from Sherwood Forest. In 1868, at the age of 14, he came to America with a group of Mormon immigrants, and then made his way out west. As a teenager, Beard worked on his sister’s husband’s farm— the tidy farm in Echo Canyon that’s pictured in his painting. He would contemplate the Witch Rocks as he worked on the land. He found the formations fascinating, and returned years later to paint them. An artist since childhood, Beard continued to paint even as he helped work to build his new community in Summit County. He loved the Uinta Mountains and painted many studies of the beautiful landscape of his new home. George Beard died in Coalville in 1944.
