| American Paintings — Frederic Dellenbaugh - Lower Grand Canyon near Kaibab |
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Frederic Dellenbaugh - Lower Grand Canyon near Kaibab |
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Signed: F.S. Dellenbaugh, Inscribed indistinctly: . . . zona Nov. 1875 Medium: Oil on canvas laid on board Dimensions: Board size: 16" x 14" , Frame size: 20 5/8" x 18 ½" Born in McConnelsville, Ohio, in 1853, Frederic Dellenbaugh (1853-1935) became interested in landscape painting and mapmaking at an early age. At eighteen, he was skilled enough to be chosen for the second John Wesley Powell expedition down the Colorado River. On the expedition he served as both artist and as assistant mapmaker, and he began his life-long habit of keeping a daily journal of his travels. Overshadowed by Powell's spectacular first voyage down the Colorado and Green rivers, the second expedition was important in that it mapped the great river and provided scientific data invaluable to the understanding of the geology of the Colorado Plateau. This fascinating oil painting, almost abstract in its rendering, was most probably inspired by what Dellenbaugh saw on the Powell expedition. Frederic Dellenbaugh was an early sketcher and mapmaker of the American West. He is perhaps best known for his travels, writing, and artwork in the Southwest, as well as his activities with the Cragsmoor, New York, art colony. He was also one of the earliest artists to travel to Alaska, going there in 1899 as a commissioned landscape painter for the Harriman Expedition, which traveled up the coast of Alaska as far as Plover Bay in Siberia. But Dellenbaugh was also interested in fine art, which he studied for a short time. He took some classes in New York and in Europe, but his primary method of study was painting in the field, particularly scenes and landscape features that were difficult to photograph. He traveled widely, to Iceland, Norway, the West Indies and South America. His paintings sold well and were often published as illustrations for natural history books. Using material from his private journals, he himself wrote and illustrated several books about the western United States. Provenance: Collection of Edward Eberstadt & Sons |
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