In 1899 the congregation commissioned the Swedish American painter Jonas Olaf Grafstrom to create a painting for behind the altar. (The painting was moved to a side wall in the sanctuary when the altar was rebuilt in the 1960s). Grafstrom, born in Attman, Sweden, in 1855, made a name for himself as a landscape painter in the Pacific Northwest in the 1880s. But in 1893 he left the Portland area to take a teaching position at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. Five years later, he became the chair of the Art Department at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, a position he held for nearly 30 years. Grafstrom died in 1933.

His altarpieces were hung in about 200 Swedish Lutheran churches stretching from Pennsylvania to California. Some of his work is also found in his home country, and a large selection of his work is in the art gallery collection of Augustana College. Grafstrom was recently featured in a five-part documentary on the work of Swedish-American artists for public television in Sweden.

Grafstrom's religious paintings were often derived from other well known paintings. One of his more popular subjects seems to have been Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, which comes from the 1890 Heinrich Hofmann painting of the same subject. Hofmann's painting is now widely reproduced and can be found hanging in homes and churches throughout the world. The original of that version is in Riverside Church in New York City, a gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr. Yet it is doubtful that Grafstrom or Hofmann could have ever guessed just how universal the image they painted over 100 years ago would become.

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