John Hafen, born in Scherzingen, Switzerland on 22 March 1856, came with his parents to Payson, Utah in 1862, converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Six years later, the family was in Salt Lake City.
Hafens earliest teachers there were Danquarth Anton Weggeland (1827-1918) and George Morton Ottinger (1833-1917). Hafen, Lorus Pratt (1856-1923) and John B. Fairbanks (1844-1940) proposed that the Church provide travel scholarships for art missionaries to study art in Paris, so that the Salt Lake Temple could be properly decorated with frescoes. The proposal was accepted; accordingly in July of 1890, the group reached the City of Light.
Hafen explained that he enrolled in the Académie Julian, owing to its high standing: that school had the greatest reputation of any in the world at that time. (Horne, 1914, p. 46).
The Mormon art missionaries were dedicated to the study of art and they held religious ceremonies in their private quarters. Hafen was drawn to landscape work and was influenced by impressionism (Gibbs, 1987, p. 25). In late June of 1891, Hafen attended the wedding of colleague James Taylor Harwood; then he went to Switzerland to look up relatives.
By August, he had returned to Utah, eager to begin sketches for the Temple mural project. He spent eighteen months on the decoration (Salt Lake Herald, 9 February 1896), mainly in the garden room; one local writer described it as luminous with warm and natural effects in landscape, beasts and birds. (Anderson, 1893, p. 288).
Along with Harwood and Edwin Evans, Hafen taught privately at their Academy of Art in Salt Lake City. Hafen maintained noble aims in painting: the mission of art [is] to elevate our feelings, to double our capacity for enjoyment, to feel the poetry and harmony of life. (Hafen, 1905, p. 403). Yet Hafen was not above purely aesthetic enjoyment. His Girl among the Hollyhocks of 1902 (Museum of Church History and Art, Salt Lake City), which depicts his daughter Delia, shows exuberant brushwork, a delight in the brilliant white hollyhocks, and plein-air effects. One wonders if Hafen might have seen similar compositions of flower gardens by John Leslie Breck or Childe Hassam, but Hafens painting has a decorative lushness that anticipates the work of third generation painters at Giverny. Most of Hafens paintings (over two hundred) were acquired by The Mormon Church.
Hafen passed away while in Brown County, Indiana, on 3 June 1910.
