245 Mount McKinley

SOLD
Winning Bid Undisclosed
This item SOLD at 2016 Apr 02 @ 14:43UTC-7 : PDT/MST
Category Art
Auction Currency USD
Start Price 37,500.00 USD
Estimated at 75,000.00 - 100,000.00 USD
Mount McKinley
Artist: Laurence, SydneyDate of Birth: 1865-1940
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 40 x 30 inches
Signed: Signed lower right and dated 1929
Verso:

The first professional artist to make Alaska the principal subject of his art, Sydney Laurence grew up in Brooklyn, studied at The Art Students’ League where he absorbed the tenets of Tonalism as practiced by John F. Murphy and others, and picked up techniques for depicting water, rocks and peaks in private lessons with Edward Moran. Newly married, Laurence traveled to England, became a war correspondent during the Boer War, and then—for reasons that remain a mystery—left his wife and children for the gold fields of Alaska. Laurence settled in Anchorage, remarried, and found his ultimate fortune in his masterful paintings of the drama and majesty of the many moods of Mount McKinley. In this Mount McKinley, a dramatic 40 x 30 inch painting, a squall parts to reveal the sunlit summit. The restrained palette and bold strokes that become the forest, river, and dead tree in the foreground evoke the approaches of the Tonalists. Slashes of brighter hues provide contrast and set a mood—Nature is at her most powerful here, her most forbidding, and, perhaps, her most beautiful.