Saturday’s Salt Lake Tribune carried a feature article on the so-called LDS “art missionaries”–Utah artists who were sent by LDS leaders to Paris to improve their painting skills and prepare to paint murals in the nearly completed Salt Lake Temple. The missionaries, a group that included John Hafen, John B. Fairbanks, Lorus Pratt, Edwin Evans, and Herman Haag, attended the Académie Julian and receiving training in the French naturalist style. Fairbanks reflected, with a bit of exaggeration, on their skills upon arriving in Paris: “We got there and we learned that we couldn’t even draw a big toe.”

Upon their return, the art missionaries worked on the Garden Room and the World Room inside the temple (photos available here).

The Tribune article also touches upon the artists’ later careers and the impact they made on Utah art.
Further information on the art mission is available here.