Painting in the North

Beginning in 1741 when European explorers first landed in Alaska, Western artists have attempted to capture the region's magnificent landscape and unique inhabitants. This lavishly illustrated, carefully researched volume explores the rich body of work produced by the visiting and resident artists of Alaska as represented in the remarkable collection of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. Surveying more than two centuries of Alaskan drawing, painting, and printmaking, this landmark study introduces a long-overlooked chapter of art history. The art of Alaska has evolved along with the territory: Charming, untutored sketches of Arctic scenes led to polished landscapes influenced by the latest European schools of painting. The first culturally biased images of Natives gave way to more sensitive, even romanticized, renderings of the inhabitants and their threatened way of life. Intrepid documentary artists who traveled north with scientific and commercial expeditions were followed by part-time artists attracted by gold and adventure. A new era began in the late nineteenth century when trained painters as well as tourists cruised the Inside Passage. Successful artists from the East Coast and California, including the renowned painters Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith, found novel subjects in Alaska's stunning glaciers and imposing mountain ranges. And the wayfaring Rockwell Kent discovered timely inspiration on a remote island in Resurrection Bay. Perhaps the most lasting images of Alaska were created by the four enormously popular resident painters Sydney Laurence, Eustace Ziegler, Theodore Lambert, and Jules Dahlager. Laurence's sublime mountain views were balanced by Ziegler's raucous scenes of fishermen and gamblers, while Lambert and Dahlager each helped reinforce the vision of a harsh but invigorating frontier. Prominent Native artists added an indigenous perspective to the growing number of northern scenes. Alaska's relative isolation ended with the Great Depression and World War II. The landscape explored by one dozen WPA artists in 1937 was still unfamiliar to the wider world, but by the end of World War II, official military artists had publicized the islands and highways of Alaska. A thriving arts community and the state's colleges turned out a fresh generation of artists. Although some still find inspiration in the traditional subjects of whale hunts and dogsleds, others pursue a more modernist approach in the continuing quest to portray life in the North.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.