Harry Anderson

1906–1996 · United States

An illustrator for America's great magazines who gave much of his life to painting the Savior, first for his own church and then for ours.

Harry Anderson's paintings are under copyright, so this wing doesn't show them. Each card below opens the painting where its owner shares it.

From mathematics to magazines

Joseph Harry Anderson was born in Chicago on August 11, 1906. He meant to be a mathematician, but at the University of Illinois in 1925 he found he loved to draw and paint. He studied classical art at Syracuse University and graduated in 1931.

For more than 50 years he worked as a freelance illustrator for magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post, and for major businesses.

Sources: Wikipedia, Harry Anderson (artist) · Church History Museum, Harry Anderson: An Accomplished Artist

A painter of the Savior

Harry and his wife, Ruth, joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the 1940s. He painted hundreds of religious illustrations for his church and considered that work part of his personal ministry.

In 1963 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints asked him to paint Christ Ordaining the Twelve Apostles for its pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The Church History Museum estimates six million people saw it as they entered. Nearly two dozen more paintings for the Church followed, and his paintings of Christ now hang in meetinghouses, visitors’ centers and temples around the world.

Sources: Church History Museum, Harry Anderson: An Accomplished Artist · Wikipedia, Harry Anderson (artist)

See his work in person

The Church History Museum in Salt Lake City holds Christ Ordaining the Twelve Apostles and The Second Coming (1979, oil on canvas, 120 × 79 inches). It has also exhibited 25 of his paint studies in A Legacy in the Making.

Sources: Church History Museum, Work and Wonder: List of Artworks · Church History Museum, A Legacy in the Making

The paintings