The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints purchases There Is Help For You by Elspeth Young

The original oil painting There Is Help For You, by Elspeth Young, was recently purchased by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Inasmuch as all copyrights to the painting remain the property of the artist, paper prints and giclee-canvas reproductions of the painting will remain available directly and exclusively from Al Young Studios.  Requests to publish or otherwise reproduce the image in any manner should also be directed to Al Young Studios.

"Among the most compelling and tragic trails of the Mormon western migration," according to Laura Allred Hurtado, global acquisitions art curator for the Church, "is that of the Willie and Martin handcart companies.  Loader, who recorded her experiences, tells a story of both horrible disaster and miraculous salvation."

"Of them," Hurtado continued, "Wallace Stegner wrote:"  Perhaps their suffering seems less dramatic because the handcart pioneers bore it meekly, praising God, instead of fighting for life with the ferocity of animals and eating their dead to keep their own life beating, as both the Fremont and Donner parties did.  And assuredly the handcart pilgrims were less hardy, less skilled, less well equipped to be pioneers.  But if courage and endurance make a story, if human kindness and helpfulness and brotherly love in the midst of raw horror are worth recording, this half-forgotten episode of the Mormon migration is one of the great tales of the West and of America.  ("Ordeal by Handcart" by Wallace Stegner in Collier's Magazine (Springfield, Ohio: Crowell-Collier Publishing Co., July 6, 1956), pp. 78-85.)

Tags: There Is Help For You, 2016, News, Oil paintings and prints