#MC65
1879
Mounted on period board with manuscript title on recto and verso. One small spot mildly rubbed, otherwise a very good watercolour. Watercolour ca. 25 x 40cm (10 x16 inches).
This attractive painting by a listed Canadian artist shows the Mount of the Holy Cross, which "is the northernmost 14,000-foot mountain in the Sawatch Range, part of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.., It was named for the distinctive cross-shaped snowfield on the northeast face. Under USDA Forest Service administration, the mountain was proclaimed "Holy Cross National Monument" by Herbert Hoover on May 11, 1929. The monument was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933..,
This mountain has been the subject of painters, photographers and even a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (The Cross of Snow). The first publicly available photograph was published in National Geographic magazine. Thomas Moran depicted the mountain in an oil painting, which now is part of the collection of the Museum of the American West, part of the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, California.., The first recorded ascent of Holy Cross was in 1873, by F. V. Hayden and photographer W. H. Jackson during one of Hayden's geographical surveys"(Wikipedia).
"The Canadian painters Samuel C. Hawksett (act. 1856-1903) and Joseph Dynes (1825-1897).., opened their studio in Montreal in the early 1860s, advertising "Photographs taken in all sizes and painted in Oil or Water Colours." One product of their apparently brief collaboration is a painted photograph - Portrait of Alphonse Poitras - now in the collection of the Château de Ramezay in Montreal"(http://www.gallery.ca/bulletin/num20/thomas1.html).
