Here are two videos I have just posted to YouTube that feature the above painting as it is on display at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art:
Beginning and ending with Alaska’s most famous artist Sydney Laurence’s painting of the Chugach Mountains (as seen from Anchorage’s Spenard and Fireweed roads), this circle tour passes by numerous other Alaska scenes painted by various Alaskan Artists-while pausing to highlight multiple of his iconic Mount McKinley paintings.
The 1939 Chugach Mountains painting is the last of Sydney Laurence’s paintings on display at The Anchorage Museum and likely his last mountain painting before his death in 1940,
Photos in honor of this year being the 60th Anniversary of "The Sound of Music:"
Unfortunately the Gazebo below is now locked to the public, but on our visit it could still be entered. (A point of trivia, the scenes inside the gazebo were performed on a sound stage in a larger partial gazebo to allow more room for the dancing.)
The Von Trapp Family Residences used in the film:
The actual Von Trapp Family Residence in which they lived in real life. At the time of our visit it was functioning as a hotel/museum but sadly since COVID it has remained closed to the public for both as a hotel and for tours:
Maria's Room when she was a governess. In real life her original assignment when she first left the convent was to tutor just one of the children. When the 25 year older Widower Captain asked her to Marry him she panicked and ran back to the Convent, but the Nuns instructed her to return and accept the proposal. In time she learned to love the head of the household and they had three children of their own.
The wedding chapel where the marriage occurred, located in a small village outside of Salzburg:
This below piece of furniture at the entrance was actually used in the house when the Von Trapp family lived there prior to fleeing Austria (by train, not climbing any mountains). When the Nazi's took over the house it may have remained there then as well. Eventually the Von Trapp family sold the house to The Catholic Missionaries of the Precious Blood and they dedicated one of the larger upper rooms to be converted to a chapel. This was done, in part, to offset the house's dark period when it served as Himmler's summer retreat and would be visited by Hitler. The chapel was there on our stay.
(The story goes that one night when Hitler was sleeping in an upstairs room he heard a Russian slave worker in the courtyard below whistling a Russian tune. He was so infuriated that there was a firing squad the next morning. Reportedly, slave labor built the surrounding walls that were added and when the task was completed they were shot.)
Although not as elaborate as the ones in the movie, as seen in the mirror, the actual home had bannisters that could be slid down on as well.
As we visit the “Sound of Music” movie locations aboard the “Sound of Music” Tour Bus in Salzburg Austria, the passengers break out in a familiar song from the movie.
Link to Video aboard the "Sound of Music" Tour Bus in Salzburg Austria:
A Narrated Tour of Three Mt. McKinley Paintings by Sydney Laurence on Display at the Anchorage Museum
In 1903 Sydney Laurence gave up his impliedly struggling career as an Artist in Europe to come to Alaska and make a fortune finding gold.
For ten years he prospected but found little gold and apparently remained so broke he could not afford to return to his children in the custody of his separated wife who had remained in England.
In 1913 he returned to serious painting while living in Valdez after having been employed in a Cordova Photo Studio. There he accepted the invitation to paint Mt. McKinley for display at the upcoming Panama-Pacific Exposition to be held in San Francisco in 1915.
Friends in Valdez fronted the funds to make the painting possible and by summer of 1913 Sydney Laurence had traveled to a scenic location 10 miles south of the mountain where he made numerous sketches of Mt. McKinley.
With sketches in hand he returned to Valdez where he completed his first two authentic paintings of Mt. McKinley. One of those paintings completed in 1913 can be seen in this video. The other much larger painting intended for the Exposition was completed in 1914 and went on loan to the Smithsonian in early 1915. Whether from there it made it to the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition as intended is up for debate, but what is known for certain is that it remained with the Smithsonian for 50 years until alleged heirs were able to convince a Seattle judge to order it released to them. At that point it went to auction in 1968 and disappeared from public view.
While the much larger painting titled “Top of the Continent” remains lost to the public, I was able to acquire a photo of it from when it was being promoted for the auction.
In this video that photo is compared to its sister painting hanging in the Anchorage Museum.
The video also includes two other notable Mt. McKinley paintings by Sydney Laurence on display at the Anchorage Museum. The first of the other two is a replacement for one that had been donated by Sydney Laurence to the Anchorage School in 1923 that was burned in the school's 1955. The similar replacement for the one burned in the fire is titled "Arctic King."
Link to Video of Mount McKinley Paintings by Sydney Laurence at the Anchorage Museum:
Below is a brochure for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition held in San Francisco and for which Sydney Laurence was commissioned in 1913 to paint his first large painting of Mt. McKinley for it that was titled, "Top of the Continent:
The 1913 Painting Believed to Be the first Completed Painting of Mt. McKinley by Sydney Laurence
Photo of the Photo of the Concurrently Painted "Top of the Continent" Painting which is now lost to the public, but had hung in the Smithsonian for 50 years:
Found Page from "Art & Connoisseur" that included photo of "Top of the Continent" Painting:
Painting of Mount McKinley titled "Arctic King" that Replaced a Similar Painting that Sydney Laurence Donated to the Anchorage School in 1923, but which was lost in a 1955 fire when the school burned down:
The Sydney Laurence Painting of Mt. McKinley from 1929 that hangs in an entrance foyer at the Anchorage Museum:
Photo Postcards Received by Sydney Laurence in Tyonek Alaska of his Children in England:
Tyonek, Sydney Laurence's first known painting to have been Painted in Alaska from 1905 which depicts Tyonek with Mt. Spurr in the distance:
The Rescued from the Trash Lost Painting by New Hope Artist George J. Stengel of the Hudson River School:
The Painting of a Hawaiian Fish Pond by Dennis Morton that became Lost to him after my acquisition
And for those interested in the saga of my search for a photo of the lost to the public "Top of the Continent" Painting , Sydney Laurence's first large painting of Mt. McKinley which had hung in the Smithsonian for 50 years before becoming lost to the public:
An Easter Surprise
A Short Story about a Tall Subject
As I pen this, it is Easter Weekend, a time for believers to remember the Resurrection of Christ and for all to witness the return of life, at least in colder climes, to the world that we occupy.
Easter is also a time when what has been hidden can be found, and for many that is an Easter egg or Easter basket. This account is about a “Golden Easter egg” that I have just found. Admittedly, it may be a stretch to equate a flat and rectangular photo of a painting to a an oblong egg, but there can be no question as to how “golden” it is to find and reclaim that which has been lost. After all, in this year of soaring egg prices many are reportedly substituting dyed potatoes for Easter eggs so there is present precedent for expanding the definition of an Easter egg.
To begin with I personally know a little about lost and found paintings. Some years ago a family member rescued an abandoned painting headed for the trash heap only to discover that it was a long lost work by a New Hope Painter of the Hudson River School. When I took it to our city’s version of the “Antique Road Show,” that was held at the Anchorage Museum, the appraiser placed a five figure value on it.
Then there was the painting that I purchased directly from the artist after having chanced upon him painting it on the shores of a Hawaii Fish Pond. Years later I found the painting pictured in a book after the artist had long lost knowing of its whereabouts. Ironically the dimensions of the painting as printed in the book did not match my measurements. (After reconnecting with the artist, I informed him of this fact and he offered that in any reprinting of his book the correct dimensions would be included.). I say “ironically” because dimensions - which had also been mistakenly reported - of the subject found “Golden Easter egg” painting proved to be a key clue in confirming the finding.
For those who have been following my recent postings I related how exciting it was [at least for me] to come across a Sydney Laurence painting at the Anchorage Museum that depicted Mount Spurr, the volcano I had been monitoring and photographing over the past months as it has remained in the news as likely to erupt.
In the course of my research about Sydney Laurence, who to this day remains Alaska’s most prominent and best known landscape artist, I came across references to his first large painting of Mount McKinley, but no photos of it in any of the books containing photos of his paintings. This piqued my curiosity and initiated the treasure hunt which I have above referenced as a Golden Easter egg hunt.
Attempting to locate a photo of this elusive Sydney Laurence Painting has taken me to securing copies of all of the locatable books about Sydney Laurence, repeated visits to the Anchorage Museum, meeting with the reference librarian at Anchorage’s Library, visiting the Tidal Wave Used Book Store (a repository of out of print Alaska related books), contacting the Smithsonian Museum, and numerous internet searches.
Spoiler Alert: This weeks long effort finally found success as my “Easter Surprise” consisting of a found photo of the sought after painting arrived in the mail this week, just days before Easter.
Going back to the beginning of this personal Easter egg hunt, allow me to share just what is so special and compelling about the particular painting. To fully appreciate this, one needs to learn something about the life of Sydney Laurence including what brought him to Alaska and his life in Alaska up until he painted the “Golden Easter egg” painting. The painting is named “Top of the Continent” and it was painted in 1913 and completed in 1914.
The most prominent and detailed book about Sydney Laurence was authored by Keller E. Woodward, a University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Art professor and painter himself. In his book titled, “Sydney Laurence, Painter of the North” and published in 1990 he discusses Sydney Laurence’s “Top of the Continent” painting but does not include a picture of it, noting that it had fallen into “private hands” and could not be included.
In an internet posting I did locate a a footnote referencing that a picture of “Top of the Continent” had appeared in a June 1968 publication titled “Art and Connoisseur.”
In my continuing quest to locate a photo of the painting I met with the reference librarian at Anchorage’s principle library who did an interlibrary search to learn if any libraries had “Art and Connoisseur.” While she found a hit, the excitement was short lived as we learned that the New Zealand Library that still had copies of “Art and Connoisseur” had only begun subscribing to it some years after the date of the sought after copy.
As noted above, none of the other books about Sydney Laurence contained a photo of the elusive “Top of the Continent” painting either, although each discussed it and provided additional clues that were important in confirming the eventual finding.
The requisite back story that allows one to appreciate what is so special and compelling about the “Top of the Continent” painting begins with what brought Sydney Laurence to Alaska in the first place.
In the years prior to his leaving England where he had resided and become a recognized Painter, he had become separated from his first wife. At the time of his arrival in Alaska in 1903 he had two sons, although due to the date of the reported 1899 separation it is possible that only the first was fathered by him.
In any event the children remained in England and were apparently led to believe that their father was dead as when the oldest married in 1926, the newspaper account made reference to the “late Mr. Sydney Laurence” as his father, despite the fact that his father was alive and doing well in Alaska. (FWIW, years later when Sydney Laurence married his second wife in 1928 the official records identified him as a widower even though his first wife did not die until 1935.). There has even been a suggestion that Sydney Laurence had a son from a previous relationship or marriage as mention has been made of a son dying in World War I.
The only known contact between Sydney Laurence and his family in England after his leaving England in 1902 and arriving in Alaska in 1903 were postcards that his second wife kept and which eventually became a part of the Anchorage Museum’s archives after her 1980 death. Her death followed her husband’s by forty years. Those postcards included pictures of the children and were mailed to Tyonek, one of the first places Sydney Laurence lived in Alaska after having first spent some time in Juneau.
Tangentially significant is that one of the first, and few, paintings Sydney Laurence did during his first decade in Alaska was there in Tyonek. That was the painting which I was excited to locate that included the above referenced Mount Spurr.
Apart from the above described known contact between Sydney Laurence and his family in England, there is the suggested possibility that he did at least once return to Europe in the year after his painting “Top of the Continent” had been completed. In the foreword to the book about Sydney Laurence authored by his second wife, the writer of the foreword, C. Heurlin, who knew Sydney Laurence in his earlier years in Alaska stated, “We heard he was painting in Europe during those days of 1916.”
Given that up until that time he had remained “broke,” as he termed it, during his first decade in Alaska he was likely without funds to return to see his growing children, that date does match his receipt of substantial funds for the completed “Top of the Continent” painting. It is possible that he may have made some effort to contact, or at least check up on, his now almost fully grown children if he did indeed return to Europe.
With regard to Sydney Laurence’s lost relationship with his young children, I have to believe that a donation he made to the Anchorage School in 1923 of a 4 x 6 foot painting of Mt. McKinley was motivated, at least in part, by wanting to share with the children of his adopted City something of value that he had been unable to provide to his own children before they became young adults. After Sydney Laurence’s death in 1940 that painting was destroyed when the Anchorage High School burned in 1955, However it was replaced with a similar one titled “Arctic King” which was eventually placed “On loan from the Anchorage High School Auditorium” to the Anchorage Museum where it can be seen today.
The question continues, what led to the painting of “Top of the Continent” as his first large painting of Mount McKinley, the mountain that would become his trademark subject in dozens, if not hundreds, of paintings to follow.
With regard to the now missing “Top of the Continent” painting as his first “large painting” of Mt. McKinley, its size was consistently being represented in its contemporary descriptions as 6 foot by 12 foot.
What can be confirmed is that Sydney Laurence did not come to Alaska to paint. In his own words he describes being caught up in the gold fever of the day and in fact spent much of his time in the early years prospecting. He also admitted that he had only limited success in finding gold and turned to other venues to make a living. This included working first in Juneau for a photographer there where he leaned on limited previous experience as a photographer in Europe. He later worked for a photography studio in Cordova and appears to have started his own studio in Valdez at the beginning of 1915.
When he arrived at the new city of Anchorage later in 1915 he worked as a laborer on the newly being built Alaska Railroad and then established his own photography studio which was located initially at 4th and E Street. For the first five years in Anchorage he understandably had more success as a photographer than he did as a painter, given the limited market for works of art in a town of new settlers trying to establish themselves. (In fact his first real market in Alaska for his paintings was the Nugget Shop in distant Juneau where, like today, the ships carrying tourists to Alaska would be primarily found.)
It was not until close to 1920 that he ended up devoting his efforts exclusively to painting. Significantly he landed a contract with the Alaska Railroad Commission to document in photographs the building of the new city of Anchorage and the railroad. One of his most famous photographs from this era was of the land auction of 1915 that was held to sell lots for the new town.
(As an aside I have been in communication with the keeper of the archives at the Anchorage Museum with regard to the Sydney Laurence photographs housed there and intend to share the eventual results of those efforts in a future effort on the subject of Sydney Laurence as a Photographer.)
One of the communities that Sydney Laurence spent time in prior to settling in Anchorage was Valdez. His time there coincided with a world exposition that was being developed to be held in 1915 in San Francisco as the Panama-Pacific Exposition. There in Valdez at the beginning of 1913, either Sydney proposed to a group of friends there, or they came up with the idea on their own, that Alaska should be somehow represented at the upcoming Pan-Pac Exposition by virtue of a painting of Mount McKinley by Sydney Laurence. Mount McKinley itself was already in the news as an expedition was forming which led to its first ascent later that same year.
The outcome of that group effort was that the group of Valdez friends contributed to covering the expenses for Sydney Laurence to travel close to Mount McKinley and spend the summer making numerous color sketches which he then brought back to Valdez and there painted, from those sketches, the large “Top of the Continent” painting along with at least one other smaller painting of Mount McKinley. The smaller painting is on display at the Anchorage Museum with an attributed date of 1913 making it the first completed authentic painting of Mount McKinley by Sydney Laurence.
With regard to the 1913 smaller painting now on display at the Anchorage Museum, Sydney Laurence’s biographer and artist himself writes in his 1990 book,
“The1913 “Mt McKinley recently acquired by the Anchorage Museum, the first known Laurence painting of the mountain with which he has come to be so closely identified shares characteristics with [his] earlier Alaskan scenes.
…..
This is Sydney Laurence at his most original, most confident, and perhaps his best.”
Once the larger painting was completed in 1914 it was placed on loan with the Smithsonian’s art museum in Washington D.C. From there it is reported by many sources as having made it to the Pan-Pacific Exposition, although biographer Woodward questions that fact.
Once at the Smithsonian, it remained there for fifty years until heirs to a partial owner of the loaned painting made a claim through a Seattle Court based upon an alleged authentic bill of sale that the Seattle judge accepted and used to issue an order that the Smithsonian complied with in releasing it.
The painting went up for auction in 1968 and once purchased by a private party has been lost to the public.
My own quest to locate a photo of the now lost painting continued. With all the available books failing to include a photo I turned to the internet searching for the painting’s name, “Top of the Continent.” I found two claimed to be photos of the subject painting, but alas neither were of its reported dimensions and the two photos were clearly of different paintings. Even so I took a chance and made a “buy it now” decision to purchase the one that was available for sale.
That photo arrived this week. The clue that made it almost possible to confirm that this was indeed a photo of the “Top the Continent” painting that had been in the Smithsonian was revealed when I found a small printing at the very bottom of the page below the photo that read, “The Connoisseur, June, 1968.” This had to be the actual page from the “Art and Connoisseur” publication I had been trying to locate!
There yet remained one problem though. All the descriptions I had found in my research up to this point had identified the dimensions of the “Top of the Continent” painting as 6 feet by 12 feet and the referenced dimensions accompanying this photo were closer to 6 feet by 8 feet.
I went back to my collected research materials which led to finding an obscure footnote on the last page of Robert L. Shalkop’s book titled “Sydney Laurence, His Life and Work” that had been published in 1982. The note read with regard to the “Top of the Continent” painting, “The measurements are usually given as 6 x 12 feet, but the National Museum of American Art reports them as 71 x 95 inches.” That came within one inch each direction of the size stated on my newly acquired photo!
Mystery solved, and Holy Grail, oh, correct that, Golden Easter egg, found.
Follow up photos to my Short Story/Documentary RE: Sydney Laurence, the Alaska Landscape Painter and his Mt. McKinley Paintings:
First, here is a photo of the painter in Anchorage with his Model T, one of the first cars to drive on the unpaved streets of frontier Anchorage:
Photos of early Anchorage taken by Sydney Laurence when he opened the first Photography Studio in the newly established 1915 Anchorage: (Included is his famous photo of the 1915 Land Auction that bridged Anchorage from being a Tent City to a town:
And here is the book about Sydney Laurence written by Kesler Woodward, the University of Alaska Art Professor, along with a photo of the author Woodward's own painting on display at the Anchorage Museum:
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"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
Here are two videos I have just posted to YouTube that feature the above painting as it is on display at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art:
Beginning and ending with Alaska’s most famous artist Sydney Laurence’s painting of the Chugach Mountains (as seen from Anchorage’s Spenard and Fireweed roads), this circle tour passes by numerous other Alaska scenes painted by various Alaskan Artists-while pausing to highlight multiple of his iconic Mount McKinley paintings.
The 1939 Chugach Mountains painting is the last of Sydney Laurence’s paintings on display at The Anchorage Museum and likely his last mountain painting before his death in 1940,
Link to Video of Circle Tour at the Museum:
And here is the shorter second video with accompanying music focused just on the subject Chugach Mountains painting:
Link to the short Music Video of Sydney Laurence's Chugach Mountains Painting at the Anchorage Museum:
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(Photos taken at Miyajima, an island near Hiroshima)
Photos in honor of this year being the 60th Anniversary of "The Sound of Music:"
Unfortunately the Gazebo below is now locked to the public, but on our visit it could still be entered. (A point of trivia, the scenes inside the gazebo were performed on a sound stage in a larger partial gazebo to allow more room for the dancing.)
The Von Trapp Family Residences used in the film:
The actual Von Trapp Family Residence in which they lived in real life. At the time of our visit it was functioning as a hotel/museum but sadly since COVID it has remained closed to the public for both as a hotel and for tours:
Maria's Room when she was a governess. In real life her original assignment when she first left the convent was to tutor just one of the children. When the 25 year older Widower Captain asked her to Marry him she panicked and ran back to the Convent, but the Nuns instructed her to return and accept the proposal. In time she learned to love the head of the household and they had three children of their own.
The wedding chapel where the marriage occurred, located in a small village outside of Salzburg:
This below piece of furniture at the entrance was actually used in the house when the Von Trapp family lived there prior to fleeing Austria (by train, not climbing any mountains). When the Nazi's took over the house it may have remained there then as well. Eventually the Von Trapp family sold the house to The Catholic Missionaries of the Precious Blood and they dedicated one of the larger upper rooms to be converted to a chapel. This was done, in part, to offset the house's dark period when it served as Himmler's summer retreat and would be visited by Hitler. The chapel was there on our stay.
(The story goes that one night when Hitler was sleeping in an upstairs room he heard a Russian slave worker in the courtyard below whistling a Russian tune. He was so infuriated that there was a firing squad the next morning. Reportedly, slave labor built the surrounding walls that were added and when the task was completed they were shot.)
Although not as elaborate as the ones in the movie, as seen in the mirror, the actual home had bannisters that could be slid down on as well.
And the accompanying video:
As we visit the “Sound of Music” movie locations aboard the “Sound of Music” Tour Bus in Salzburg Austria, the passengers break out in a familiar song from the movie.
Link to Video aboard the "Sound of Music" Tour Bus in Salzburg Austria:
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1901 photo of the Green Bay and Western Railroad, captured in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
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For those of you who don't like spiders..........
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
Thomas out for a test run today
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A real Hot Rod
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"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"
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A Narrated Tour of Three Mt. McKinley Paintings by Sydney Laurence on Display at the Anchorage Museum
In 1903 Sydney Laurence gave up his impliedly struggling career as an Artist in Europe to come to Alaska and make a fortune finding gold.
For ten years he prospected but found little gold and apparently remained so broke he could not afford to return to his children in the custody of his separated wife who had remained in England.
In 1913 he returned to serious painting while living in Valdez after having been employed in a Cordova Photo Studio. There he accepted the invitation to paint Mt. McKinley for display at the upcoming Panama-Pacific Exposition to be held in San Francisco in 1915.
Friends in Valdez fronted the funds to make the painting possible and by summer of 1913 Sydney Laurence had traveled to a scenic location 10 miles south of the mountain where he made numerous sketches of Mt. McKinley.
With sketches in hand he returned to Valdez where he completed his first two authentic paintings of Mt. McKinley. One of those paintings completed in 1913 can be seen in this video. The other much larger painting intended for the Exposition was completed in 1914 and went on loan to the Smithsonian in early 1915. Whether from there it made it to the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition as intended is up for debate, but what is known for certain is that it remained with the Smithsonian for 50 years until alleged heirs were able to convince a Seattle judge to order it released to them. At that point it went to auction in 1968 and disappeared from public view.
While the much larger painting titled “Top of the Continent” remains lost to the public, I was able to acquire a photo of it from when it was being promoted for the auction.
In this video that photo is compared to its sister painting hanging in the Anchorage Museum.
The video also includes two other notable Mt. McKinley paintings by Sydney Laurence on display at the Anchorage Museum. The first of the other two is a replacement for one that had been donated by Sydney Laurence to the Anchorage School in 1923 that was burned in the school's 1955. The similar replacement for the one burned in the fire is titled "Arctic King."
Link to Video of Mount McKinley Paintings by Sydney Laurence at the Anchorage Museum:
Related Photos:
Below is a brochure for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition held in San Francisco and for which Sydney Laurence was commissioned in 1913 to paint his first large painting of Mt. McKinley for it that was titled, "Top of the Continent:
The 1913 Painting Believed to Be the first Completed Painting of Mt. McKinley by Sydney Laurence
Photo of the Photo of the Concurrently Painted "Top of the Continent" Painting which is now lost to the public, but had hung in the Smithsonian for 50 years:
Found Page from "Art & Connoisseur" that included photo of "Top of the Continent" Painting:
Painting of Mount McKinley titled "Arctic King" that Replaced a Similar Painting that Sydney Laurence Donated to the Anchorage School in 1923, but which was lost in a 1955 fire when the school burned down:
The Sydney Laurence Painting of Mt. McKinley from 1929 that hangs in an entrance foyer at the Anchorage Museum:
Photo Postcards Received by Sydney Laurence in Tyonek Alaska of his Children in England:
Tyonek, Sydney Laurence's first known painting to have been Painted in Alaska from 1905 which depicts Tyonek with Mt. Spurr in the distance:
The Rescued from the Trash Lost Painting by New Hope Artist George J. Stengel of the Hudson River School:
The Painting of a Hawaiian Fish Pond by Dennis Morton that became Lost to him after my acquisition
And for those interested in the saga of my search for a photo of the lost to the public "Top of the Continent" Painting , Sydney Laurence's first large painting of Mt. McKinley which had hung in the Smithsonian for 50 years before becoming lost to the public:
An Easter Surprise
A Short Story about a Tall Subject
As I pen this, it is Easter Weekend, a time for believers to remember the Resurrection of Christ and for all to witness the return of life, at least in colder climes, to the world that we occupy.
Easter is also a time when what has been hidden can be found, and for many that is an Easter egg or Easter basket. This account is about a “Golden Easter egg” that I have just found. Admittedly, it may be a stretch to equate a flat and rectangular photo of a painting to a an oblong egg, but there can be no question as to how “golden” it is to find and reclaim that which has been lost. After all, in this year of soaring egg prices many are reportedly substituting dyed potatoes for Easter eggs so there is present precedent for expanding the definition of an Easter egg.
To begin with I personally know a little about lost and found paintings. Some years ago a family member rescued an abandoned painting headed for the trash heap only to discover that it was a long lost work by a New Hope Painter of the Hudson River School. When I took it to our city’s version of the “Antique Road Show,” that was held at the Anchorage Museum, the appraiser placed a five figure value on it.
Then there was the painting that I purchased directly from the artist after having chanced upon him painting it on the shores of a Hawaii Fish Pond. Years later I found the painting pictured in a book after the artist had long lost knowing of its whereabouts. Ironically the dimensions of the painting as printed in the book did not match my measurements. (After reconnecting with the artist, I informed him of this fact and he offered that in any reprinting of his book the correct dimensions would be included.). I say “ironically” because dimensions - which had also been mistakenly reported - of the subject found “Golden Easter egg” painting proved to be a key clue in confirming the finding.
For those who have been following my recent postings I related how exciting it was [at least for me] to come across a Sydney Laurence painting at the Anchorage Museum that depicted Mount Spurr, the volcano I had been monitoring and photographing over the past months as it has remained in the news as likely to erupt.
In the course of my research about Sydney Laurence, who to this day remains Alaska’s most prominent and best known landscape artist, I came across references to his first large painting of Mount McKinley, but no photos of it in any of the books containing photos of his paintings. This piqued my curiosity and initiated the treasure hunt which I have above referenced as a Golden Easter egg hunt.
Attempting to locate a photo of this elusive Sydney Laurence Painting has taken me to securing copies of all of the locatable books about Sydney Laurence, repeated visits to the Anchorage Museum, meeting with the reference librarian at Anchorage’s Library, visiting the Tidal Wave Used Book Store (a repository of out of print Alaska related books), contacting the Smithsonian Museum, and numerous internet searches.
Spoiler Alert: This weeks long effort finally found success as my “Easter Surprise” consisting of a found photo of the sought after painting arrived in the mail this week, just days before Easter.
Going back to the beginning of this personal Easter egg hunt, allow me to share just what is so special and compelling about the particular painting. To fully appreciate this, one needs to learn something about the life of Sydney Laurence including what brought him to Alaska and his life in Alaska up until he painted the “Golden Easter egg” painting. The painting is named “Top of the Continent” and it was painted in 1913 and completed in 1914.
The most prominent and detailed book about Sydney Laurence was authored by Keller E. Woodward, a University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Art professor and painter himself. In his book titled, “Sydney Laurence, Painter of the North” and published in 1990 he discusses Sydney Laurence’s “Top of the Continent” painting but does not include a picture of it, noting that it had fallen into “private hands” and could not be included.
In an internet posting I did locate a a footnote referencing that a picture of “Top of the Continent” had appeared in a June 1968 publication titled “Art and Connoisseur.”
In my continuing quest to locate a photo of the painting I met with the reference librarian at Anchorage’s principle library who did an interlibrary search to learn if any libraries had “Art and Connoisseur.” While she found a hit, the excitement was short lived as we learned that the New Zealand Library that still had copies of “Art and Connoisseur” had only begun subscribing to it some years after the date of the sought after copy.
As noted above, none of the other books about Sydney Laurence contained a photo of the elusive “Top of the Continent” painting either, although each discussed it and provided additional clues that were important in confirming the eventual finding.
The requisite back story that allows one to appreciate what is so special and compelling about the “Top of the Continent” painting begins with what brought Sydney Laurence to Alaska in the first place.
In the years prior to his leaving England where he had resided and become a recognized Painter, he had become separated from his first wife. At the time of his arrival in Alaska in 1903 he had two sons, although due to the date of the reported 1899 separation it is possible that only the first was fathered by him.
In any event the children remained in England and were apparently led to believe that their father was dead as when the oldest married in 1926, the newspaper account made reference to the “late Mr. Sydney Laurence” as his father, despite the fact that his father was alive and doing well in Alaska. (FWIW, years later when Sydney Laurence married his second wife in 1928 the official records identified him as a widower even though his first wife did not die until 1935.). There has even been a suggestion that Sydney Laurence had a son from a previous relationship or marriage as mention has been made of a son dying in World War I.
The only known contact between Sydney Laurence and his family in England after his leaving England in 1902 and arriving in Alaska in 1903 were postcards that his second wife kept and which eventually became a part of the Anchorage Museum’s archives after her 1980 death. Her death followed her husband’s by forty years. Those postcards included pictures of the children and were mailed to Tyonek, one of the first places Sydney Laurence lived in Alaska after having first spent some time in Juneau.
Tangentially significant is that one of the first, and few, paintings Sydney Laurence did during his first decade in Alaska was there in Tyonek. That was the painting which I was excited to locate that included the above referenced Mount Spurr.
Apart from the above described known contact between Sydney Laurence and his family in England, there is the suggested possibility that he did at least once return to Europe in the year after his painting “Top of the Continent” had been completed. In the foreword to the book about Sydney Laurence authored by his second wife, the writer of the foreword, C. Heurlin, who knew Sydney Laurence in his earlier years in Alaska stated, “We heard he was painting in Europe during those days of 1916.”
Given that up until that time he had remained “broke,” as he termed it, during his first decade in Alaska he was likely without funds to return to see his growing children, that date does match his receipt of substantial funds for the completed “Top of the Continent” painting. It is possible that he may have made some effort to contact, or at least check up on, his now almost fully grown children if he did indeed return to Europe.
With regard to Sydney Laurence’s lost relationship with his young children, I have to believe that a donation he made to the Anchorage School in 1923 of a 4 x 6 foot painting of Mt. McKinley was motivated, at least in part, by wanting to share with the children of his adopted City something of value that he had been unable to provide to his own children before they became young adults. After Sydney Laurence’s death in 1940 that painting was destroyed when the Anchorage High School burned in 1955, However it was replaced with a similar one titled “Arctic King” which was eventually placed “On loan from the Anchorage High School Auditorium” to the Anchorage Museum where it can be seen today.
The question continues, what led to the painting of “Top of the Continent” as his first large painting of Mount McKinley, the mountain that would become his trademark subject in dozens, if not hundreds, of paintings to follow.
With regard to the now missing “Top of the Continent” painting as his first “large painting” of Mt. McKinley, its size was consistently being represented in its contemporary descriptions as 6 foot by 12 foot.
What can be confirmed is that Sydney Laurence did not come to Alaska to paint. In his own words he describes being caught up in the gold fever of the day and in fact spent much of his time in the early years prospecting. He also admitted that he had only limited success in finding gold and turned to other venues to make a living. This included working first in Juneau for a photographer there where he leaned on limited previous experience as a photographer in Europe. He later worked for a photography studio in Cordova and appears to have started his own studio in Valdez at the beginning of 1915.
When he arrived at the new city of Anchorage later in 1915 he worked as a laborer on the newly being built Alaska Railroad and then established his own photography studio which was located initially at 4th and E Street. For the first five years in Anchorage he understandably had more success as a photographer than he did as a painter, given the limited market for works of art in a town of new settlers trying to establish themselves. (In fact his first real market in Alaska for his paintings was the Nugget Shop in distant Juneau where, like today, the ships carrying tourists to Alaska would be primarily found.)
It was not until close to 1920 that he ended up devoting his efforts exclusively to painting. Significantly he landed a contract with the Alaska Railroad Commission to document in photographs the building of the new city of Anchorage and the railroad. One of his most famous photographs from this era was of the land auction of 1915 that was held to sell lots for the new town.
(As an aside I have been in communication with the keeper of the archives at the Anchorage Museum with regard to the Sydney Laurence photographs housed there and intend to share the eventual results of those efforts in a future effort on the subject of Sydney Laurence as a Photographer.)
One of the communities that Sydney Laurence spent time in prior to settling in Anchorage was Valdez. His time there coincided with a world exposition that was being developed to be held in 1915 in San Francisco as the Panama-Pacific Exposition. There in Valdez at the beginning of 1913, either Sydney proposed to a group of friends there, or they came up with the idea on their own, that Alaska should be somehow represented at the upcoming Pan-Pac Exposition by virtue of a painting of Mount McKinley by Sydney Laurence. Mount McKinley itself was already in the news as an expedition was forming which led to its first ascent later that same year.
The outcome of that group effort was that the group of Valdez friends contributed to covering the expenses for Sydney Laurence to travel close to Mount McKinley and spend the summer making numerous color sketches which he then brought back to Valdez and there painted, from those sketches, the large “Top of the Continent” painting along with at least one other smaller painting of Mount McKinley. The smaller painting is on display at the Anchorage Museum with an attributed date of 1913 making it the first completed authentic painting of Mount McKinley by Sydney Laurence.
With regard to the 1913 smaller painting now on display at the Anchorage Museum, Sydney Laurence’s biographer and artist himself writes in his 1990 book,
“The1913 “Mt McKinley recently acquired by the Anchorage Museum, the first known Laurence painting of the mountain with which he has come to be so closely identified shares characteristics with [his] earlier Alaskan scenes.
…..
This is Sydney Laurence at his most original, most confident, and perhaps his best.”
Once the larger painting was completed in 1914 it was placed on loan with the Smithsonian’s art museum in Washington D.C. From there it is reported by many sources as having made it to the Pan-Pacific Exposition, although biographer Woodward questions that fact.
Once at the Smithsonian, it remained there for fifty years until heirs to a partial owner of the loaned painting made a claim through a Seattle Court based upon an alleged authentic bill of sale that the Seattle judge accepted and used to issue an order that the Smithsonian complied with in releasing it.
The painting went up for auction in 1968 and once purchased by a private party has been lost to the public.
My own quest to locate a photo of the now lost painting continued. With all the available books failing to include a photo I turned to the internet searching for the painting’s name, “Top of the Continent.” I found two claimed to be photos of the subject painting, but alas neither were of its reported dimensions and the two photos were clearly of different paintings. Even so I took a chance and made a “buy it now” decision to purchase the one that was available for sale.
That photo arrived this week. The clue that made it almost possible to confirm that this was indeed a photo of the “Top the Continent” painting that had been in the Smithsonian was revealed when I found a small printing at the very bottom of the page below the photo that read, “The Connoisseur, June, 1968.” This had to be the actual page from the “Art and Connoisseur” publication I had been trying to locate!
There yet remained one problem though. All the descriptions I had found in my research up to this point had identified the dimensions of the “Top of the Continent” painting as 6 feet by 12 feet and the referenced dimensions accompanying this photo were closer to 6 feet by 8 feet.
I went back to my collected research materials which led to finding an obscure footnote on the last page of Robert L. Shalkop’s book titled “Sydney Laurence, His Life and Work” that had been published in 1982. The note read with regard to the “Top of the Continent” painting, “The measurements are usually given as 6 x 12 feet, but the National Museum of American Art reports them as 71 x 95 inches.” That came within one inch each direction of the size stated on my newly acquired photo!
Mystery solved, and Holy Grail, oh, correct that, Golden Easter egg, found.
USN & USAF retired 1971-1993
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USN & USAF retired 1971-1993
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I've been here looking for diamond 4 or 5 times. It is fun but I have never found a diamond yet. Kinda like CRH. Ha Ha. It is in Murfreesboro, AR.
USN & USAF retired 1971-1993
Successful Transactions with more than 100 Members
USN & USAF retired 1971-1993
Successful Transactions with more than 100 Members
Just a random picture...
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
Cool. I have stood right there. As evident from the Space Needle in the distance this is a waterway in Seattle.
Here is another Seattle view:
Follow up photos to my Short Story/Documentary RE: Sydney Laurence, the Alaska Landscape Painter and his Mt. McKinley Paintings:
First, here is a photo of the painter in Anchorage with his Model T, one of the first cars to drive on the unpaved streets of frontier Anchorage:
Photos of early Anchorage taken by Sydney Laurence when he opened the first Photography Studio in the newly established 1915 Anchorage: (Included is his famous photo of the 1915 Land Auction that bridged Anchorage from being a Tent City to a town:
And here is the book about Sydney Laurence written by Kesler Woodward, the University of Alaska Art Professor, along with a photo of the author Woodward's own painting on display at the Anchorage Museum:
You're close @1northcoin but not this close. 🤣 😉
Disclaimer: I'm not a dealer, trader, grader, investor or professional numismatist. I'm just a hobbyist. (To protect me but mostly you! 🤣 )
USN & USAF retired 1971-1993
Successful Transactions with more than 100 Members
Funny looking road grader
USN & USAF retired 1971-1993
Successful Transactions with more than 100 Members
USN & USAF retired 1971-1993
Successful Transactions with more than 100 Members
Supposed to be on the 25th - the planets and the moon are moving into place.
"When they can't find anything wrong with you, they create it!"