Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

In 1889 Albert Bierstadt traveled to Puget Sound and boarded the steamship Ancon headed for Alaska. "On 28 August, the Ancon went aground on the rocks near Loring Bay, and the passengers and crew were obliged to spend several days in a nearby salmon cannery waiting for a rescue vessel. By his own account, Bierstadt completed sixty 'studies in color' while stranded in the Alaskan fishing village. One of these, Wreck of the "Ancon" in Loring Bay, Alaska [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston], offers clear evidence that despite many years of negative reviews and jury rejections, Bierstadt had neither lost his enthusiasm for painting nor his ability to produce powerful images." (N.K. Anderson, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1990, p. 104) Similar in palette and subject, the present work is comparable to oil sketches completed by Bierstadt from trips to the Pacific Northwest and may date from this 1889 trip.