Carl Christian Anton Christensen (1831-1912) was one of the most influential artists in Latter-day Saint history. Famous for paintings such as his 23-scene Mormon Panorama, Christensen’s work was influenced by his faith, including immigrating to the United States, travelling to Utah by handcart, serving three missions, and participating in plural marriage. European painters such as Carl Bloch also influenced Christensen’s style. In this interview, biographer Jennifer Champoux discusses Christensen’s background, shares some of his paintings, and explores how his religious art helped shape Latter-day Saint beliefs and culture.
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C. C. A. Christensen’s Early Life, Conversion, and Danish Art Training
This section traces Christensen’s journey from a poorhouse boarding school in Denmark to his artistic training and spiritual conversion.
What formative experiences in C. C. A. Christensen’s early life shaped his future as an artist?
C. C. A. Christensen was born to a poor family in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1831. His mother, Dorthea, worked extra jobs to support her growing family, yet still found time to teach her children about God and how to make simple arts and crafts.
Because of the family’s economic difficulties, C. C. A. went to live at a poorhouse boarding school at age 11. There, he decorated the orphanage Christmas tree with designs of cut paper that he had learned from Dorthea.
His designs enchanted Anne Sophie Henriksen Wessel-Brown, an orphanage benefactor, who arranged for C. C. A. to attend the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
How did Christensen’s conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1850 influence his artistic direction?
Dorthea was among the first Danish converts to the Church in August 1850. C. C. A. and his brothers soon followed her lead.
On the day of his baptism on September 26, 1850, he wrote in his journal:
The sky had thus far been clouded, but in the minutes I went down into the waters to be immersed in the watery grave the moon again came out from its hiding place and seemed to be smiling at us and showing us the goodwill of the Lord, and at the same time showing a picture of the change that took place in our souls.
Christensen’s inclination to see nature as a symbol for spiritual matters would become a theme in his later art and writing.
He began to put Church learning and service ahead of his art training.
As a young man just coming into adulthood—and now with a new religious commitment—Christensen was filled with millenarian fervor. He began to put Church learning and service ahead of his art training. He graduated from the Academy but never took the advanced courses.
He mused in his journal:
My prospective success as an artist-painter seemed suddenly to be swallowed up or ruined forever, as we looked for the end of the world in a very few years. I therefore slackened a great deal in my efforts to become an artist, yet I continued attending the art academy till I had served my time as an apprentice and had passed my examination.
How did his missionary service in Scandinavia affect his spiritual and artistic development?
C. C. A. Christensen served three missions in Scandinavia, each of which shaped his spirituality and artistic style in unique ways.
1. Norway (1853-1857): Resilience Through Trial and the Foundations of Craft
The first, in Norway, was from 1853 to 1857, before he immigrated to Utah.
During the final year of this mission, Christensen served as president of the Kristiania Conference, which encompassed all of Norway. Generations of loyalty to the Lutheran Church made many Scandinavians suspicious of a new “American” religion, and Christensen faced severe persecution in Norway.
He was arrested twice in 1854, spent several weeks in jail, was fined, and was even physically attacked. He continued to write about these early trials even many years later.
Christensen experienced religious persecution first-hand, and much of his later painting of Latter-day Saint history focused on the persecution of the Saints in America.
Despite hardships, Christensen’s first mission journal shows his eagerness, humor, and devotion to the work. He spent his busy days in meetings and church conferences, often noting the names of individuals he taught. He painted houses to support himself—a useful skill he would later use to supplement his income as a farmer in Utah.
On this mission, he met and taught the Haarby family, and later married Elise Rosalia Sternhjem Scheel Haarby as they set off for Utah.
2. Scandinavia (1865-1868): The Sacrifice of Family and Spiritual Endurance
Christensen served a second mission in Scandinavia from 1865 to 1868, leaving Elise in Utah pregnant with their fourth child. In his journals from this mission, he often expresses concern and longing for his family in Utah.
3. Scandinavia (1887-1889): Refinement of the Word and Global Artistic Perspective
Twenty years later, Church leaders called Christensen to a third Scandinavian mission. He served in Denmark from 1887 to 1889. He now left Elise and his second wife, Maren Frederikke Pettersen, and thirteen living children in Ephraim, Utah.
On this mission, he honed his writing skills as editor of Skandinaviens Stjerne (Scandinavian Star).
I was interested to learn from his mission journals that he also visited European museums and exhibitions.
How is Christensen’s European training seen in his later focus on pioneer narratives and religious subjects?
Christensen was uniquely positioned as one of the first trained artists among the Latter-day Saints in Utah.
He combined traditional European art approaches and iconography with innovative symbolism specific to Latter-day Saint beliefs.
Nephi’s Vision of the Virgin and the Son of God (1890)
I think that his series on the life of Nephi (1890), for example, draws on traditional academic painting, the Danish Golden Age’s emphasis on naturalism, and French Orientalism’s preoccupation with historical detail.
Christensen’s missions to Scandinavia allowed him to visit museums and exhibitions and stay current with European art trends. He drew on those European styles as he painted new scripture in a new world.
Home! Sweet Home! (1875)
Throughout Christensen’s many paintings, there is an emphasis on ordinary people living good lives and doing great things. We see this in his paintings of Nephi—and in scenes of his pioneer friends in Utah.
His early painting Home! Sweet Home! (1875) exemplifies this approach.
A neat but simple home is surrounded by evidence of pioneer industry, including an orchard, fence, and chickens. Children play while their modest mother goes about her work.
This interest in depicting—even heroizing—the common man was an important element of Danish Golden Age thinking that Christensen learned at the Royal Danish Academy.
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Pioneer Handcart Migration, the Mormon Panorama, and Narrative Art
Explore how Christensen’s grueling handcart trek and frontier life transformed his academic training into a unique, faith-based narrative art.
What was C. C. A. Christensen’s handcart journey like, and how did it influence his art?
In 1857, the Christensens’ journey to Utah began with a boat to Liverpool (where they were married on board) and then a ship across the Atlantic. The railway carried them from Philadelphia to Iowa City.
From there, they spent their honeymoon pulling handcarts to Salt Lake City with a company of Danish immigrants.
Many years later, Christensen chronicled their handcart journey in a series of articles from 1894 to 1910. These lively writings covered the tribulations of heat, rain, bad roads, hard work, scant supplies, a new diet, language barriers, and a Scottish company captain whom the Danes felt was not interested in their customs.
Christensen described scenes such as a blind woman testing the river’s depth at a crossing, families collecting buffalo chips for fuel, and young children sent to walk ahead of the wagons to avoid the dust.
The Handcart Company (Handcart Pioneers) (1900)
He drew on these remembrances for his well-known 1900 painting The Handcart Company (Handcart Pioneers).
How did Christensen’s personal experience with polygamy manifest in his paintings?
Christensen likely drew on his own experiences with a growing family when painting Weighing the Baby in 1872 for his friend John.
As background, Christensen married a second wife, Maren Frederikke Pettersen, from Norway, in 1868, shortly after returning from his second Scandinavian mission.
His first wife, Elise, already had four children. Between 1870 and 1880, Elise gave birth to three more children, and Maren bore seven.
Weighing the Baby (1872)
This is C. C. A. Christensen’s first narrative painting, depicting the family of John F. F. Dorius, a fellow Danish settler in Utah and a former missionary companion of Christensen’s in Norway.
The painting presents a vignette of a tidy and well-ordered polygamous home.
One wife has just given birth and is recovering in bed. The other wife helps the midwife check the baby’s weight. Other women (perhaps grandmothers) and children fill the room while John stands at the threshold surveying the scene.
What was C. C. A. Christensen’s Mormon Panorama?
Christensen began the Mormon Panorama around 1877 and added scenes to it for many years. The canvas scroll was wound horizontally and could be unrolled scene-by-scene.
It eventually included 23 scenes from early Latter-day Saint history, beginning in New York with Joseph Smith, then tracing the Saints’ movement to Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, and finally Utah.
The scenes emphasize persecution of the Saints at the hands of their American neighbors. Yet they also show God’s protection of the Saints as they travel through the wilderness.
Carl Christian Christensen’s work on this project was largely inspired by his desire to teach the younger generation about the history of the Saints.
In 1879, he wrote in Bikuben (a Utah newspaper for Danish immigrants):
The old generation who bore the burdens of the day in the persecutions in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois will no longer be with us a few years hence. History will preserve much, but art alone can make the narrative of the suffering of the Saints comprehensible for posterity.
C. C. A. Christensen
How were panoramas generally received in the United States at the time?
Panoramas were a popular form of entertainment in America at the time. Other Latter-day Saints, such as Philo Dibble, Reuben Kirkham, Alfred Lambourne, and William Armitage, painted and exhibited panoramas, some of which were produced well before Christensen.
Christensen leaned into the theatricality of the panorama format by setting up curtains around his giant painted scenes, using lanterns for footlights, and reading a prepared lecture to explain the details of each scene.
Throughout the evening, Christensen led the audience in singing hymns. The performance was often given in schoolhouses as Christensen and his son traveled around settlements in Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho with the Mormon Panorama.
What are some of C. C. A. Christensen’s lesser-known paintings?
In the 1870s, Christensen was commissioned by Dimick Huntington to paint religious images that he and George Washington Hill could use in teaching Utes, Shoshone, and other Native Americans in Utah Territory.
The result was a 22-foot-long vertical scroll with eleven scenes. It begins with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, then moves through key events in the history of God’s people in both the Old and New Worlds, concluding with Joseph Smith receiving plates of scripture from Moroni.
This Huntington Panorama is now in the Church History Museum.
This Huntington Panorama is now in the collection of the Church History Museum. The Huntington Panorama and the Mormon Panorama focus on the movement of peoples from east to west: Lehi’s family from Jerusalem to the Americas, and the Mormon migration west.
Both panoramas relay 19th-century Latter-day Saint ideas about wilderness, promised land, and restoration.
Professional Legacy and the 21st-Century Rediscovery of His Work
Examine Christensen’s enduring legacy, his mid-century disappearance from public memory, and the 21st-century rediscovery of his work.
How was C. C. A. Christensen perceived during his lifetime?
Professional recognition in theater and temple art
C. C. A. Christensen was respected as a capable artist and storyteller. In the 1860s, he was hired to paint scenery in the Springville and Salt Lake theaters.
Later, his Mormon Panorama was praised in newspaper reports and endorsed by Church leaders. An 1880 handbill advertising the presentation included a testimonial from Church President John Taylor.
Not long after, in 1886, Church leaders hired Christensen to paint a mural in the creation room of the Manti Temple.
Cultural influence and ecclesiastical service in Sanpete
Christensen was also known as a poet and writer. His poems were included in early versions of the Danish Latter-day Saint hymnbook. He contributed essays and poems to Bikuben in Utah and Skandinaviens Stjerne in Denmark and spent time as editor of each publication.
His writing also appeared in Juvenile Instructor, Morgenstjernen, Deseret Evening News, and the Ephraim Enterprise. His contributions covered diverse topics, including:
- Fine art
- Water rights and use
- The region’s economic development
- Community improvements and public architecture
- Politics
- History
- Religious freedom.
His standing within the Sanpete community made him a natural fit to help organize the annual Scandinavian celebration held there each spring.
In the 1890s and early 1900s, he regularly spoke at those events, giving lectures and reading original poems, sometimes in Danish.
Around this time, he was also appointed a patriarch in the Church and tasked with helping the assistant church historian, Andrew Jenson, write a history of the Scandinavian Mission.
How long did his work originally remain influential?
C. C. A. Christensen’s writing and art continued to be influential for some years after his death in 1912. For instance, a volume of his writings was published in 1921. It was not until the mid-20th century that Christensen and other 19th-century Latter-day Saint artists faded from public memory.
In part, the programs and commissions by the Church at the time put the spotlight on a handful of new artists and artworks that were used almost exclusively in Church publications for decades.
Also, in Christensen’s case, many of his paintings were “lost” to the public for a time. Both the large panoramas and smaller panel paintings were passed down privately through descendants or the families of his friends in Sanpete.
What led to a 21st-century rediscovery of Christensen’s paintings?
In 1953, Brigham Young University acquired the Mormon Panorama from Christensen’s descendants. Ten years later, the historian Carl Carmer used the scenes to illustrate an essay in American Heritage.
Christensen’s legacy burst back onto the American art scene in 1970 when Carmer published an essay on and images of the Mormon Panorama in Art in America.
That same year, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York mounted an exhibition of the Mormon Panorama. Richard Oman and Richard Jensen built on that interest by producing the first retrospective of Christensen’s work at the Church History Museum in 1984.
In recent years, several historians have begun to re-evaluate Christensen’s life and art. This seems to match a growing interest in rediscovering the work of other 19th-century Latter-day Saint artists.
Their art can help us better understand early Latter-day Saint thought and practice.
What role do Christensen’s writings play in shaping our understanding of his work?
In 1892, Christensen published a four-part essay titled “The Fine Arts” in Bikuben. Reading this essay helped me understand his approach to art, a category that, for him, included everything from painting and sculpture to woven rugs and cast-iron stove decorations.
He believed people would find an ennobling spirit by using everyday objects beautified with art. And he saw his own artistic endeavors reflected in the nature of God, the greatest artist and creator.
It was all part of how he lived and shared his faith.
For Christensen, his art, his writing, and his daily work in the community were all part of how he lived and shared his faith in the restored gospel.
I noticed that Christensen sometimes rewrote his hastily penned diaries later into leather journals, using an elegant cursive and making minor edits or additions.
He clearly wanted to preserve his story along with the history of the Latter-day Saints.
We are lucky that C. C. A. Christensen’s journals are preserved in the Church Library. Some are even digitized and available online!
His many letters sent home to Elise, and her replies to him, are also in the Church History Library.
How does your biography reassess Christensen’s place in both Latter-day Saint cultural history and American religious art more broadly?
Drawing on Christensen’s art, writing, and biography, my book takes a closer look at three main areas:
- Exile and Restoration: Christensen’s portrayal of wilderness as a symbol, representing complex ideas about political and religious liberty.
- Visual Vocabulary: His blend of European, American, and Latter-day Saint ideologies and symbols to create a new visual vocabulary.
- Community Dedication: The artist’s dedication to both his Scandinavian heritage and the Zion community he envisioned in Utah, and how his struggles to navigate between the two reflect a broader tension that still exists in the global Church today.
I think we are only beginning to understand the role that Christensen and other 19th-century Utah artists played in developing Latter-day Saint art and thought.
How did his art help shape Latter-day Saint beliefs and culture?
Art not only reflects beliefs and culture but can help create and cement them. In Christensen’s case, he had a unique combination of European academic art training, Protestant upbringing, American immigrant experience, Utah Territory settler life, and Latter-day Saint faith.
All that plays into the style and symbolism of his art.
As the most prolific painter of Latter-day Saint history and scripture in his day, Christensen influenced how church members thought about these subjects. And he shaped the Saints’ view of art as a tool to preach, memorialize, and inspire.
Did you make any surprising discoveries while researching the biography?
It was exciting to discover in Christensen’s third mission journal that he saw Carl Bloch’s paintings on the life of Christ in Denmark in 1888.
This helped me understand the change in Christensen’s style that I saw in his 1890 life of Nephi series, and I think he was influenced by Bloch’s series.
I also discovered that Bloch and Christensen were classmates at the Royal Danish Academy in 1849.
Today, Latter-day Saints are familiar with Bloch’s religious paintings, which have been used frequently in Church publications since the mid-twentieth century. But I think Bloch, through Christensen, was influencing Latter-day Saint art long before that.
What are your main takeaways from his life?
As I read through Christensen’s journals, letters, poems, and essays, it was clear that he loved his family deeply. I can imagine there might have been tense moments in a polygamous household with many children and a father often traveling. But in the journals and letters of Christensen, Elise, and Maren, I only see expressions of love and support.
One of Christensen’s most tender journal entries from his third mission describes his feelings on learning of the tragic death of his son Niels Erastus in an accident.
Yet, even in this moment of greatest despair, Christensen expressed his faith, writing that the mercy of the Lord and “the comforting influence of the holy spirit” supported Elise and him during this sad time.
Christensen was a man wholly dedicated to living his beliefs, often at great personal cost.
As a young convert to the Gospel, he put aside his professional training to serve a dangerous proselyting mission and then immigrate to a new country. He struggled to support his young family in Utah with farming and odd jobs.
He served two additional missions, each involving painstaking travel and time away from his beloved family. Immediately upon returning from his third mission, he was arrested for unlawful cohabitation.
He painted the history of the Saints and created religious art to instruct them.
As an older man, C. C. A. Christensen taught Danish in the community, helped write the history of the Scandinavian Mission, edited a local paper, wrote essays urging his fellow citizens to higher standards, organized Scandinavian celebrations, and served as a Church patriarch.
I am inspired by the way he fearlessly lived his faith.
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About the Scholar
Jennifer Champoux is a teacher, scholar of Latter-day Saint visual art, and the director of the Book of Mormon Art Catalog. She authored C. C. A. Christensen: A Mormon Visionary, coauthored Picturing Christ: Understanding Depictions of Jesus in History and Art, and coedited Approaching the Tree: Interpreting 1 Nephi 8. She hosted the limited-series podcasts Latter-day Saint Art and Behold: Conversations on Book of Mormon Art. Jenny earned a BA in international politics from Brigham Young University (2004) and an MA in art history from Boston University (2006).
Further Reading
Explore more From the Desk articles about Latter-day Saint art history:
- What Was the Paris Art Mission?
- What Inspires Jorge Cocco’s Paintings
- How Do the Joseph Smith Papers Influence Latter-day Saint Art?
- What Do AI Temple Illustrations Look Like?
- What Role Does Vision Play in the Doctrine and Covenants?
C. C. A. Christensen Resources
Read what top scholars and publishers say about C. C. A. Christensen, the Danish Latter-day Saint pioneer painter:
- C. C. A. Christensen: A Mormon Visionary (University of Illinois Press)
- Christensen, C. C. A. (Book of Mormon Art Catalog)
- Indigenous Life in Utah and Recently Discovered C. C. A. Christensen Panoramas (Utah Historical Quarterly)
- Two Danish Artists—Two Not So Divergent Paths: C. C. A. Christensen, Carl Bloch, and the Evolution of Latter-day Saint Art and Aesthetics (Journal of Mormon History)
- C. C. A. Christensen Highlights (BYU Museum of Art)
- Joseph Preaching to the Indians (Center for the Study of Material & Visual Cultures of Religion)
