By George .....A fine art commissioner SMOKY SUNRISE, ASTORIA HARBOR 1882 CLEVELAND ROCKWELL BORN YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO, 1837; DIED PORTLAND, OREGON, 1907 Rockwell came to the Pacific Northwest in 1868 to survey the coast and rivers, and he became a painter and a chronicler of the Columbia. Astoria Harbor was Rockwells favorite subject for the variety of activity that was centered there-the coming and going of ocean clippers, river steamers, and the rafts and dinghies of salmon fishers and of loggers, which we see here. This painting was commissioned by Captain George Flavel, who for decades ran the principal tug service that towed ships upriver from Astoria to Portland. --Patricia Junker, Curator of American Art, 2007 The north (or Washington Territory) side of the river is very bold, almost mountainous. Cliffs and precipices occur at almost every point. Above the remarkable neck of land called Tongue Point, where the river widens into a large sheet of water known as Cathlamet Bay, there are again large areas of tide lands, or swamps, intersected by numerous channels. Some of these channels are navigable, and are used by the small steamers plying between Astoria and Portland. -Cleveland Rockwel Provenance: Commissioned by Captain George Flavel, Astoria, Oregon; descended in his family to his great grand-daughter, Patricia Flavel, Oakland, California; sold through [Butterfield and Butterfield, San Francisco]; sold to [Braarud Fine Art, La Conner, Washington] Cleveland Rockwell Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Cleveland Rockwell received early training in art and engineering. He was a cartographer for the Union Army in the Civil War, after which he made a brief mapping tour of South America, then settled in Portland, Oregon. He became chief of the NW section of the U.S. Geodetic Survey and conducted surveys in California, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska. He surveyed the 50 miles of Oregon coast south of Astoria and the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. Although Rockwell did not become a full-time painter until his retirement in 1892, the many sketches he made on his expeditions served as the basis for his later oil and watercolor paintings. Rockwell was a founding member of the Portland Art Club. Cleveland Rockwell has no known relationship with the artist Norman Rockwell. Braarud Fine Art is interested in both oil paintings and watercolors in fine, unfaded condition by Cleveland Rockwell.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 20:08:12 +0000
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