Junker

2011 · ref. 95532 — University of Washington Press. New. Paperback. FREE UPGRADE to Courier/Priority Shipping Upon Request - IN STOCK AND IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE FOR SHIPMENT - Flawless copy brand new pristine never opened -- 72 pp. ; 52 illus. 37 in color. -- with a bonus offer--; In 1870 Albert Bierstadt painted one of the most novel subjects of his career: Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast. The canvas resulted from newly reawakened interest in a region the artist had visited only briefly seven years before. Although Bierstadt claimed to have painted "a portrait of the place" he had never actually made it to Puget Sound in 1863 and the painting has long been dismissed as another "superb vision of dreamland." This book reveals the fact-within-the-fiction of Bierstadt's spectacular eight-foot-wide view of Puget Sound. It follows his travels around the Washington Territory in 1863 travels that were far more extensive than previously known. It identifies the artist's source material in Northwest Coast native artifacts early historical accounts of the region and the sketches he made on the Columbia River and Washington and Vancouver Island coasts. It compels us to reconsider the function of the painting--to see it not as a landscape but as a historical work a narrative of an ancient maritime people and a rumination on the ages-old mountains basaltic rocks dense woods glacial rivers and surf-pounded shores that have given this region its look and also shaped its culture. Patricia Junker is the Ann M. Barwick Curator of American Art at the Seattle Art Museum. . 2011. 0295991240 . University of Washington Press paperback