Title: Sydney Laurence, Painter of the North Writers and Artists view the Alaskan Landscape Author:: Kesler Woodward Pub Date: 1990 ISBN: Paper: 0-295-96953-9 Price: Paper: $27.95 Subject Listing: 20th-Century Art Bibliographic information: • 152 pp • 120 illus • map, 95 in color Buy this book from Amazon: click here

Sydney Mortimer Laurence (1865-1940) was the foremost painter of the Alaskan landscape and his work is so well known to Alaskans as to make him a legend in the forty-ninth state. At the same time, his paintings of a romantic, unspoiled northern frontier - Mt. McKinley, trapper's cabins and caches, quiet pools, rocky coasts, and totem poles - are little known beyond Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Even in Alaska, where his work is known to virtually every resident, the artist's life and early career have long been shrouded in mystery, and his work has never been placed in the larger context of the art of his time. Sydney Laurence came to Alaska as a gold seeker at the turn of the century, after a successful early painting career in New York, England, and Europe. He had exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York, won an award at the Paris Salon of 1894, and was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and an active participant in the thriving colony of British and expatriate American artists in St. and White magazine covering the Spanish American War, South Africa, and China, he spent his first years in Alaska looking for gold and painting little. But by 1915 he was gaining a reputation as the first ambitious painter of the Alaskan landscape, and his 6' x 8' canvas of Mt. McKinley had been acquired and exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution's National Collection of Fine Arts. Laurence continued to paint the Alaskan landscape as a full time resident until the mid-1920's, and as a commuter between Anchorage, Seattle, and Los Angeles until his death in 1940. This book is the first to present the full range of Laurence's work. The author's introductory essays discuss Laurence's developments as an artist in New York, England, and Europe; place the artists's Alaskan work in the context of other painting of his time; and review his legacy in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and beyond.

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