"A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth." -- John Singer Sargent

Friday, December 25, 2015

Joseph Smith




This 1971 portrait of Joseph Smith by Adrian Lamb, after an unknown artist, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

"During the 1820s, the religious movement called the Second Great Awakening was particularly powerful in upstate New York, an area known as the 'Burned Over District' for the fierceness of its revivals. Amidst this fervid religiosity, young Joseph Smith in 1830 founded what came to be known officially as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or more informally as the Mormons, after a book he said he translated, the Book of Mormon. Smith urged his fol­lowers to gather into communities that by their size and cohesiveness threatened other citizens, which led to antagonism and ultimately forced evictions. In 1839 they settled in Commerce, Illinois, which they renamed Nauvoo. After five years, opposition to the Mormon presence, grew, as did challenges to Smith's leadership from political opponents and Mormon dissenters. After he closed down an opposition newspaper, he was put in prison, where he was attacked by a mob and murdered." -- National Portrait Gallery

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