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Seldovia 1912
Sydney Laurence (1865 - 1940)
Oil on board 24cm. x 33cm.
Although modestly sized, this painting shows some of the best qualities of Laurence's work: complete control of the medium and a fine sense of atmosphere. Although Laurence is revered in Alaska as a "true-to-life" artist, this painting shows how effectively Laurence conveyed the landscape with almost abstract imagery.
Laurence came to Alaska around 1905 from England, where he left a wife and two small children. In an interview late in his life Laurence stated that he came to Alaska dreaming of striking it rich as a prospector. Instead, he eked out a living painting and prospecting, searching the shores of Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, and the Alaska Peninsula. When Anchorage was settled as a railroad construction camp in 1915, Laurence was one of the first residents, supporting himself as a photographer. By the 1920s he was able to make a full-time living as an artist, living part of the year in Los Angeles, and the summers in Alaska.
1969.100.006 Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert O. Kinsey
Radio Babies ca 1940
George Aden Ahgupuk (1911 - 2001)
Ink and watercolor on skin 25cm. x 38cm.
This whimsical watercolor depicts the dispatch of advice to a woman having a baby through radio waves from a well-known early Alaska doctor, Howard Romig, to an expectant mother in Bethel, in western Alaska. Romig came to Alaska as a medical missionary in the late 19th century, moved to Anchorage to work at the Alaska Railroad hospital, and became one of Anchorage's first mayors.
George Ahgupuk was born in 1911 and grew up on the Seward Peninsula. Much of his upbringing centered on the traditional subsistence activities of his Eskimo ancestors, with an overlay of newly introduced activities: reindeer herding and school. Many teachers and missionaries struggling to educate Native students encouraged their students to draw scenes of Native life. Native patients in hospitals for long stays were also encouraged to draw. Ahgupuk was such a patient whose talent was discovered while he was in a hospital recovering form a knee operation in 1934. Well-known American artist Rockwell Kent championed him, and the American Artists Group in New York made Ahgupuk a full member, sending him pens, ink and other drawing materials.
Aghupuk drew the life he knew from his home in Shishmaref in Northwest Alaska: hunting scenes, celebrations, reindeer herding, and domestic scenes. He found that his drawings on seal and reindeer skin were very popular, and he specialized in these. His earlier works often consisted of a series of as many as nine small drawings on a single skin, showing different scenes of Eskimo life.
1970.169.001 Gift of the National Bank of Alaska
The Inside of a House in Oonalashka 1784
John Webber (1750 - 1794)
Engraving 25.6cm. x 40.6cm
In the 18th century the governments of Britain, France, Spain and Russia dispatched naval expeditions to explore the far corners of the world. The voyages were made for scientific and economic reasons, but also for the prestige that such voyages garnered the countries that sponsored them.
Captain James Cook of the British Royal Navy was perhaps the best-known explorer of the 18th century. During his three voyages he skirted the Antarctic and discovered numerous islands in the Pacific, including Hawaii. In 1778 he sailed along the coast of Alaska, observing and charting while seeking the Northwest Passage, a water route along the top of North America that would permit British merchants to trade cheaply with the Orient. Cook was turned back by ice in the Arctic Ocean and a cheap route to the Orient along the top of North America still remains a dream.
Artists were often included on the voyages to provide accurate drawings of the people, the land, and the animals. John Webber was the artist who accompanied Cook on this final exploration voyage. In this print Webber shows the exterior of an Aleut communal dwelling on Unalaska Island in the Aleutians, which Cook wrote as "Oonalashka."
Cook himself did not survive the journey, dying during an altercation with Hawaiian Natives, but the two ships and their crews returned to England in 1780. Webber oversaw the translation of his drawings to engravings, which illustrated the published journals of the voyage. These official or Admiralty journals were issued in 1784 and sold out in three days, an indication of the great popularity of exploration and travel journals. One of the results of the voyage was that British and American merchants learned of the sea otter fur trade between Russia and China, and sent their own ships to exploit this lucrative trade.
1972.112.03 Anchorage Municipal Acquisition Fund purchase
Resurrection Bay, Alaska 1965
Rockwell Kent (1882 - 1971)
Oil on canvas 71cm. X 111.8cm.
Kent and his nine-year old son came North to Alaska in the fall of 1919 and found a cabin on Fox Island in Resurrection Bay near Seward, where they spent an energetic winter. Prior to Kent, most artists had come to Alaska first as expedition artists and then as professional artists who visited briefly to paint the grand landscapes popular in the later part of the 19th century. The few resident artists came not for art, but were prospectors or held other jobs. Kent had another reason for coming. In his book, "Wilderness", in which he chronicles his Alaskan winter, he describes his reason for coming as "...the flight to freedom of a man who detests the endless petty quarrels and the bitterness of the crowded world - the pilgrimage of a philosopher in quest of happiness and peace of mind."
Kent spent less than a year in Alaska before urgent entreaties from his wife led him and his son to return to the American East Coast. The paintings he created on Fox Island, and the works he completed after his return, led to his first successful show. Kent went on to become a very prominent American artist, although his support for communist causes made him very controversial.
Kent's paintings portray a North that is both stark and luminous. Kent returned to his Alaska memories for inspiration for many years. This painting was done in the mid-1960s, some forty-five years after his Fox Island sojourn.
1973.03.01 Gift of ATZ Travel, ERA Helicopters, Dr. and Mrs. Lloyd Hines, Mr. Bruce Kendall, and Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.
Extreme End of Indian Town, Sitka, Alaska 1891
James Everett Stuart (1852 - 1941)
Oil on canvas 61cm. x 106.4cm.
This painting shows a view of a Tlingit village from the shore. The long forms in the foreground along the beach are the large ocean-going dugout canoes, hollowed from a single massive cedar log. Covering them are damp woolen trade blankets to keep the wood from drying out and causing major splits that would ruin the boats. The dwellings beyond were traditionally made of hand-adzed planks set into heavy beam frames. The rectangular projection from the roof was a shield to partially cover the smoke hole during the frequent rains in Southeast Alaska. Although by the time Stuart painted, some Tlingit houses may well have had stoves, others still had a traditional central fire pit that was used by all members of the house. Another sign of change is the wash hung to dry near the houses.
James Everett Stuart was the grandson of the eminent American artist Gilbert Stuart, renowned for his portraits of George Washington. James Everett Stuart was very popular in the late 19th century as a landscape artist. He established a studio in Portland, Oregon in 1881, producing landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. He moved east to New York and later to Chicago, but returned to the Pacific coast in 1912 when he lived and worked in San Francisco.
Stuart first visited Alaska during the summer of 1891, traveling by steam ship the coastal route known as the Inside Passage along British Columbia to Southeast Alaska. He repeated this trip numerous times, producing a large number of landscapes. Typically he painted the title, date, and his own inventory number in large letters on the back of each canvas. One of the works in the museum's collection is dated from the 1920s, showing that Stuart painted scenes of Alaska for over thirty years.
1974.07.01 Joint purchase, the Anchorage Museum Association and the Anchorage Municipal Acquisition Fund
Quest for Avuk 1973
Fred Machetanz (1908 - )
Oil on board 81.3cm. x 130.8cm.
Machetanz depicts a crew of Eskimo men paddling an umiak, a lightweight walrus hide covered boat used in hunting sea mammals such as seals, walruses and even bowhead whales. The men are wearing camouflage kuspuks of cotton canvas over their parkas. In the boat is a rifle, a traditional toggling harpoon, and a float made of an entire sealskin blown up like a balloon. Floats, attached to harpoon lines, were used to tire a wounded animal or to locate an animal that was submerged.
Fred Machetanz has become an extremely popular Alaska artist. His depictions of a by-gone Alaska, either of Alaska Natives or of sourdoughs, has become the Alaskan past for many people. Machetanz came to visit his uncle in the tiny Bering Sea coast village of Unalakleet in 1935. That first visit, planned for six weeks, stretched to two years. During World War II, Machetanz returned to Alaska with the U.S. Navy, and after the war made his home near Anchorage, writing and illustrating books with his wife, Sara, and giving illustrated lectures in the Lower Forty-Eight states. He even made a film on Eskimo sled dogs for Walt Disney.
Although the images Machetanz paints seem romantic visions of an idealized past, his best works show that which he experienced himself. Machetanz joined a whaling crew and paddled an umiak during whale and walrus hunting. He drove dog sleds. He lived in cabins in the Alaska wilderness. Machetanz had formal art training at Ohio State University. He was greatly influenced by Maxfield Parrish, who was a personal friend.
1974.047.001 Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Elmer E. Rasmuson
Untitled, Wrangell Indian Villageca 1900
Theodore J.Richardson (1855 - 1914)
Watercolor on board 25cm. x 35cm.
Theodore Richardson was a native of Minnesota who first ventured along the Inside Passage to Sitka in the summer of 1884. He returned summer after summer and produced many watercolors, some oils and some pastels. He became popular with the townspeople of Sitka and is known to have taught at least one watercolor class at the request of local women. In 1902, when he returned to Sitka after spending several years studying art in Europe, he was feted with several receptions and a picnic to which the entire town was invited.
Like the artists who accompanied the European explorers a century earlier, Richardson focused on the Alaska Natives as an exotic other. In addition, Richardson shared late 19th century interest in landscape, producing artworks that celebrated the heavily forested, mountainous landscape of Southeast Alaska. This watercolor shows the Tlingit village at Wrangell, a scene that we know Richardson painted at least several times.
1974.52.01 Gift of the Rasmuson Foundation
Untitled - Man with a Burden June 1974
Lawrence Ahvakana (1946 - )
Alabaster 43.2cm. x 17.7cm. x 48.4cm.
Larry Ahvakana’s family has roots near Barrow, Alaska. As a young man he attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, then the Cooper Union School of Art, completing his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. His work is strongly based on Native images and activities, but is done in his own style and often in non-traditional materials such as marble, alabaster, and glass.
In an interview Ahvakana remarked that one of his artworks represented himself, “…the mythical walrus man or medicine man, traveling through life, always adapting to change but keeping the essence of Inupiat culture within.” In another statement he said, “Being an Inupiat is not to be bound by landscape. I live away from my ancestral home but retain the essence of my ancestors. It is the basic nature of our way of life which I capture in my artwork. The tools may be modern, the material perhaps foreign to the grandfathers, but the final statement would be the same.”
1975.031.001 Gift of the Anchorage Museum Association
