The Art Of Mount Shasta
January 16 - May 2, 2010
Art object labels from the exhibition
- Artists unknown
- Assorted postcards from the Mount Shasta region, 1890-1940s
- Mount Shasta Collection, College of the Siskiyous, Weed,
California
- __________
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- Many people learned of Mount Shasta's appearance from
postcards sent by intrepid friends and family who braved what was often
a long journey to visit the mountain.
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- Artist unknown
- California for the Tourist: The Charm of the Land
of Sunshine, by Summit, Sea, and Shore, 1910
- Offset lithograph
- Mount Shasta Collection, College of the Siskiyous, Weed,
California
- __________
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- Because the image of Mount Shasta had become so widely
known by the late nineteenth century, it was commonly used to promote tourism
within the entire state.
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- Artist unknown
- Book cover for Mary Austin's California: Land of the
Sun, 1914
- Mount Shasta Collection, College of the Siskiyous, Weed,
California
- __________
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- On this beautifully designed book cover, Mount Shasta
symbolizes the northern part of the state while an orange tree evokes the
southern portion.
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- Artist unknown
- Picus Williamsonii, Williamson's Woodpecker, Williamson-Abbot
survey report, volume 6, plate XXXIV, 1857
- Hand-colored lithograph on paper
- Private collection
- __________
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- Collecting scientific data was a key function of the
expeditions of the mid-nineteenth century. This Shasta area bird was new
to science when collected near Klamath Lake in 1855. It was named for expedition
leader Robert Williamson. Today its common name is Williamson's sapsucker
(Sphyrapicus thyroideus).
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- The image is part of the final report on the Williamson-Abbot
railroad survey, which laid the groundwork for construction of a railroad
line from Redding to Roseburg.
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- Artist unknown
- Sacramento Valley, special
brochure published by Sunset Magazine, 1911
- Offset lithograph on paper
- Private collection
- __________
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- This serene composition blends images of dramatic wilderness
(Shasta) with suggestions of agricultural plenty. Implicitly, the viewer
takes in an impression of both material and spiritual sustenance.
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- Alfred Thomas Agate (1812-1846,
born in New York state)
- Shasty Peak, 1841
- Ink wash on paper
- Navy Art Collection, Naval Historical Center, Washington,
DC
- __________
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- How did the Navy come to be at Mount Shasta in 1841?
This picture is the oldest known original artwork of Mount Shasta. It is
part of the nearly forgotten story of America's greatest around-the-world
explorers -- the Wilkes Expedition. After one of their six ships ran aground,
a group of officers journeyed overland from the Columbia River past Mount
Shasta to Sutter's Fort. Although they were scientific explorers, they
also had a mandate to determine political conditions in anticipation of
a coming war with Mexico.
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- The need to store the collections stemming from four
years of scientific inquiry by the dedicated scientists and artists of
the 1838-1842 "U.S. Exploring Expedition" was a major factor
leading to the founding of the Smithsonian Institution.
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- Alfred Thomas Agate (1812-1846,
born in New York state)
- Shaste Peak, 1845
- Steel engraving on paper
- Collection of Turtle Bay Exploration Park
- __________
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- Agate's original ink wash drawing was faithfully copied
and reproduced as a steel engraving. The engraving became famous, while
the original drawing was housed with the Wilkes Expedition's scientific
records and specimens.
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- The 1844 first edition of this engraving has the caption,
"Shasty Peak," and is the earliest known published image of Mount
Shasta. Editions from 1845 and later label the picture as "Shaste
Peak."
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- Thomas Ayres (1816-1858,
born in New Jersey)
- Mount Shasta at the Head Waters of the Sacramento
Valley, 1858
- Wood engraving on paper
- Collection of Turtle Bay Exploration Park
- __________
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- The vantage point for this image is Cottonwood Creek
near Redding. Ayres's chief claim to fame was that in 1855 he became the
first artist working in the European tradition to depict Yosemite Valley.
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- Harry Cassie Best (1863-1936,
born in Canada)
- Mount Shasta from the West, ca.
1890s
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of the Behrens Eaton Museum, Redding, California
- __________
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- Harry Cassie Best, whose studio in Yosemite was later
used by his son-in-law Ansel Adams, was a prolific painter whose work was
admired by Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt wrote in 1908, "I appreciate
very much your painting, the Afterglow on Mount Shasta, and shall
give it the place of honor in my home. I consider the evening twilight
on Mt. Shasta one of the grandest sights I have ever witnessed."
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- Carl Oscar Borg (1879-1947,
born in Sweden)
- Mount Shasta, 1909
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of the Hearst Corporation
- __________
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- In 1909, Phoebe Apperson Hearst (mother of William Randolph
Hearst) wrote to artist Carl Oscar Borg as follows, beginning a lifelong
friendship between the two of them:
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- "I am writing to ask you if you will come to my
mountain home near Shasta and stay
- until Sept. 12th. There are many lovely places where
I think you will enjoy sketching.
- After the 12th of September I should be glad to have
you make a visit of two weeks
- at my Hacienda not far from San Francisco. You will find
there a few scenes to
- please you. I am requesting my business manager to send
you a check for fifty
- dollars to cover the expenses of your trip here. As you
are, I hope, to be my guest, it
- is my privilege to send the amount to meet all expenses.
Enclosed find directions for
- the route from S.F. to McCloud. Please send a telegram
to let me know if you can
- come and when we may expect you. Yours sincerely, P.A.
Hearst."
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- Henri Joseph Breuer (1860-1932,
born in England)
- Snowy Mountain, after 1903
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Claudia and Marvin Vickers
- __________
- Breuer relates, "I board a train to some station
somewhere near Mount Shasta, and thus into the woods the days were grand
before that high, white altar, Shasta. I shall feel for all my life that
I was a true pilgrim, and for the sake of days like that, I am happy to
be what I am, a landscape painter I can assure you it is nine-tenths hard
work and physical endurance. In my choice of subjects I am unfortunately
so fortunate as to choose the grand and big and strong, therefore I have
often to travel far and endure much, but the game is worth the effort,
and a trophy brought in by my brush is worth more to me than a 'big kill'
of mountain sheep or antlered elk."
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- Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser Busch Company,
acquired several of Breuer's paintings.
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- Alphonso Herman Broad (1851-1930,
born in Maine)
- Mt. Shasta, early twentieth-century
- Oil on board
- Collection of Turtle Bay Exploration Park
- __________
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- Broad, a noted architect of schools and homes in Berkeley,
California, was a friend of many of the 1870s artists, including William
Keith.
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- Broad's work may often be identified by his preference
for an apple-green color, as seen in this painting.
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- Samuel Marsden Brookes (1816-1892,
born in England)
- Dolly Varden Trout on the Banks of the McCloud River, 1876
- Oil on canvas
- Private collection
- __________
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- In 1876 the Smithsonian Institution hired San Francisco
artist Brookes to travel to the McCloud River to make accurate color portraits
of river fish. The upper McCloud was the only river in California to have
the Dolly Varden trout, which required cold, clear glacial water for survival.
Note the icy blue water in the painting as well as river plants and rocks
characteristic of the McCloud.
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- The Dolly Varden was named around 1872 by young Elda
McCloud Masson of Dunsmuir for the trout's defining solid red spots, which
reminded her of the red pattern found on Dolly Varden dresses then in fashion.
The name originally came from a flirtatious character in a Charles Dickens
novel. The Dolly Varden trout (today called the bull trout) is now extirpated
from the McCloud and is no longer found in California.
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- Frederick Butman (1820-1871,
born in Maine)
- Mount Shasta and Shastina Lake,
not dated
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley
- __________
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- Butman shares with Albert Bierstadt the distinction of
being one of the first high-ranking artists to paint Mount Shasta. Paintings
exist from 1863 and 1864. The delicacy of his style sets him apart from
his contemporaries.
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- Acquiring landscape paintings to hang in one's home was
just beginning to be popular at this time in California's history. Butman
was one of the first in California to make a living as a landscape painter.
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- Philip K. Carnine (1884-1976,
born in South Dakota)
- Mt. Shasta, not dated
- Oil on board
- Collection of Turtle Bay Exploration Park
- __________
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- Carnine worked as a sign painter and typesetter in Mount
Shasta City. He wrote Diamond Spike: The Autobiography of an All-American
Racketeer, a book about several of the characters in the small communities
in the Mount Shasta area. Carnine created many paintings of Mount Shasta
and was one of the first artists to live in the Mount Shasta area rather
than just visit.
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- A. Cedro (active circa 1910,
possibly born in Russia)
- Mount Shasta, ca. 1909
- Oil on canvas
- Collection of Turtle Bay Exploration Park
- __________
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- Very little is known about this folk artist who lived
in Siskiyou County at the turn of the twentieth century. Dozens of his
farm, wildlife, still-life, and landscapes scenes, including several Arctic
paintings, are known. Many works are still found in northern California
and southern Oregon taverns and clubs, however, suggesting one sort of
place that captured his attention. The story persists that after his wife
left him he used her likeness in many of his signed bar room nudes.
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- In this painting Cedro relies on a compositional formula
made famous in the U.S. by Albert Bierstadt in such epic paintings as his
Among the Sierra Nevada, California (1868). In the foreground,
wildlife is at home on the edge of a tranquil lake emerging into the scene
from the left. Rocky outcroppings or stretches of dense forest occupy the
middle ground. Finally, in the background a mountain of stunning
proportions soars.
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- [Panel image 1: Get Bierstadt image from this site.
- www.americanart.si.edu/images/1977/1977.107.1_1a.jpg]
- Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada, California,
1868, oil on canvas, 72 x
- 120-1/8 inches, Smithsonian American Art Museum (1977.107.1)
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- Attributed to Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900,
born in Connecticut)
- Sacramento River Looking East to Mt. Shasta on the
Left, Lesser Peak on the Right, not dated
- Watercolor on paper
- Collection of the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma
- __________
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- This fine watercolor ascribed to Frederic Church and
identified as a view of Shasta actually resembles sites farther north.
The view matches closely a perspective east of the mountains, facing west,
with Mount Jefferson to the left, Mount Hood to the right, and the Columbia
River in the foreground. However, as Church never traveled to the West,
it cannot be an on-the-spot work from his hand.
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- This work reveals that Mount Shasta had become so familiar
that its name was ascribed early on-and inaccurately-to views of lesser
known peaks.
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- Mary J. Coulter (1880-1966,
born in Kentucky)
- Mt. Shasta Above the Pines,
not dated
- Drypoint on paper
- Collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa
Barbara, California
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- James Dwight Dana (1813-1895,
born in New York state)
- The Shasty Peak, 1849
- Steel engraving on paper after 1841 sketch
- Collection of Turtle Bay Exploration Park
- __________
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- Dana, one of America's greatest scientists, created a
system of mineralogy still used today around the world. He sketched Mount
Shasta in his notebook as part of his duties on the Wilkes Expedition in
1841. Thus Dana shares with Alfred Agate the distinction of being one of
the first two people known to have made sketches of Mount Shasta.
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- Dana recognized in 1841 the possibility of gold in the
northern California mountains, and published this sketch in 1849 as part
of an article answering all the questions about California he was being
asked as the Gold Rush began.
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- Arthur B. Davies (1863-1928,
born in New York state)
- Mt. Shasta, ca. 1906
- Oil on board
- Private collection
- __________
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- Davies is best known for being one of The Eight (also
known as the Ashcan School), a group of east coast American painters. They
painted scenes of daily life, often raw and "un-pretty."
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- This painting is unusual in that it shows just the Shastina
cone of Mount Shasta, perhaps done in an attempt to avoid the conventional
portrayal of the mountain. A few years after he made this ethereal sketch
of Mount Shasta, Davies became one of the chief organizers of the renowned
Armory Show of 1913, which introduced European Modernism to the American
public.
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- Albert Thomas DeRome (1885-1959,
born in California)
- Mt. Shasta, Abrams Lake or Lake Elaine, 1913
- Watercolor
- Collection of Turtle Bay Exploration Park
- __________
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- DeRome was one of the few artists in California to paint
the landscape north of Mount Shasta. He was particularly drawn to the Upper
Klamath River. He traveled widely; one commentator has said that between
1918 and 1931 he may have traveled more than any other artist in California.
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- DeRome was paralyzed from the waist down and confined
to a wheelchair after a tragic college fraternity hazing incident. His
insurance settlement required that he never sell a painting for money,
so for the rest of his life he gave his paintings away.
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- John Doty (1870-1959)
- Mount Shasta, ca. 1943
- Oil on board
- Collection of Richard C. Frey
- __________
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- The self-taught Doty moved to Mount Shasta City in 1894,
when the town was still named Sisson. He was the earliest known resident
artist in the Mount Shasta region.
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