Mt.Hood by Eliza Barchus
Unsigned
Oil on board
3 1/16" x 5"
This small piece was hanging in Frank's former beach house when his father bought it in 1942. The previous owners, fearing a Japanese invasion of the Washington coast, had fled to Walla Walla, selling everything lock, stock and barrel.
If you follow early Pacific Northwest painting, eventually you will encounter the works of Eliza Barchus. I admire Eliza Barchus immensely because she was a self-made entrepreneur in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in a field that was dominated by men. I also love her style because it is unique and runs counter to conventional tastes in art.
This painting is very typical of her style.
At first, I didn't get the skies in her pieces. I suppose she must have painted a blue sky once or twice, but they're often the weird shade of grey seen here. Are we really on Planet Earth?
Well, now that I've lived with a view of Mt. Hood for a while, I can say that it often does look like this late in the afternoon when seen from Portland.
The piece isn't signed, but I don't know enough about Barchus's work to say whether or not that's unusual.
Wikipedia says Barchus "produced thousands of works of various sizes in an 'assembly-line' style that was effective but sometimes criticized."
You see, Barchus was a widow, and she really did have to make a living to support herself and her family. She didn't have family wealth and position to fall back on. So it wouldn't surprise me if this is indeed one of hers, perhaps sold at the "B. B. Rich cigar and souvenir concession at the Portland Hotel."
The curved horizontal streaks in this photo are hardly noticeable in real life. They look like they could be scratches, but I think they're actually traces of a surface coat Barchus applied before the pieces left her studio.
Wikipedia recaps Barchus's life and works as follows:
Eliza Barchus (December 4, 1857 – December 31, 1959) was a prolific, prize-winning landscape painter who lived in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon for most of her life.
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Barchus moved to Portland in 1880. After taking art lessons from another landscape painter, Will S. Parrott, Barchus sold her first painting in 1885.
Between then and 1935, she produced thousands of oil paintings and reproductions of subjects such as Mount Hood, Yellowstone Falls, Muir Glacier, and San Francisco Bay.
Barchus, who had won medals at Mechanics Fairs in Portland in the late 1880s, drew national attention in 1890, when one of her large canvases of Mount Hood was displayed at the National Academy of Design exhibition in New York City. In 1901, several of her works were shown at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, and in 1905 she won a gold medal at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland for oil paintings of Pacific coast scenery.
Widowed in 1899, Barchus supported herself and her family for decades largely by selling or trading her art. Several years after her death at age 102, the Oregon Legislative Assembly named her "The Oregon Artist". Many art collections in Portland and elsewhere include examples of her work.
Mt.Hood by Eliza Barchus
Unsigned
Oil on board
3 1/16" x 5"
This small piece was hanging in Frank's former beach house when his father bought it in 1942. The previous owners, fearing a Japanese invasion of the Washington coast, had fled to Walla Walla, selling everything lock, stock and barrel.
If you follow early Pacific Northwest painting, eventually you will encounter the works of Eliza Barchus. I admire Eliza Barchus immensely because she was a self-made entrepreneur in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in a field that was dominated by men. I also love her style because it is unique and runs counter to conventional tastes in art.
This painting is very typical of her style.
At first, I didn't get the skies in her pieces. I suppose she must have painted a blue sky once or twice, but they're often the weird shade of grey seen here. Are we really on Planet Earth?
Well, now that I've lived with a view of Mt. Hood for a while, I can say that it often does look like this late in the afternoon when seen from Portland.
The piece isn't signed, but I don't know enough about Barchus's work to say whether or not that's unusual.
Wikipedia says Barchus "produced thousands of works of various sizes in an 'assembly-line' style that was effective but sometimes criticized."
You see, Barchus was a widow, and she really did have to make a living to support herself and her family. She didn't have family wealth and position to fall back on. So it wouldn't surprise me if this is indeed one of hers, perhaps sold at the "B. B. Rich cigar and souvenir concession at the Portland Hotel."
The curved horizontal streaks in this photo are hardly noticeable in real life. They look like they could be scratches, but I think they're actually traces of a surface coat Barchus applied before the pieces left her studio.
Wikipedia recaps Barchus's life and works as follows:
Eliza Barchus (December 4, 1857 – December 31, 1959) was a prolific, prize-winning landscape painter who lived in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon for most of her life.
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Barchus moved to Portland in 1880. After taking art lessons from another landscape painter, Will S. Parrott, Barchus sold her first painting in 1885.
Between then and 1935, she produced thousands of oil paintings and reproductions of subjects such as Mount Hood, Yellowstone Falls, Muir Glacier, and San Francisco Bay.
Barchus, who had won medals at Mechanics Fairs in Portland in the late 1880s, drew national attention in 1890, when one of her large canvases of Mount Hood was displayed at the National Academy of Design exhibition in New York City. In 1901, several of her works were shown at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, and in 1905 she won a gold medal at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland for oil paintings of Pacific coast scenery.
Widowed in 1899, Barchus supported herself and her family for decades largely by selling or trading her art. Several years after her death at age 102, the Oregon Legislative Assembly named her "The Oregon Artist". Many art collections in Portland and elsewhere include examples of her work.