The July 14 public sale catalog from O’Gallerie options an early Oregon portray by the little-known however intriguing artist Charles Christian Eisele.
Eisele is briefly profiled in William Gerdts’ Artwork Throughout America: Two Centuries of Regional Portray (Quantity III) the place he seems amongst a dozen artists within the Oregon chapter.
Christian Eisele, one other in a position panorama painter, labored in Oregon on the finish of the century. Eisele, who seems additionally to have been lively in Colorado and Utha, is understood for his rendering of native surroundings, akin to View of the Dalles, Mount Hood, and Mount Saint Helens within the Distance.
The German-born Eisele adopted the panoramic format favored by many western panorama painters and utilized it to metropolis views; one other instance is his detailed Logan, Utah, painted in 1892. The next 12 months Eisele was commissioned by the World’s Faire Fee of Utah to ship a big portray of Salt Lake Metropolis to the World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago.
A succinct entry in Oregon Painters – The First Hundred Years (1859 – 1959) by Ginny Allen and Jody Klevit tracked his life with extra precision
Christian Eisele was an itinerant painter who first appeared in Oregon in 1888. His oil work have been proven on the Portland Mechanics Truthful and the Industrial Expositions. He operated the Omaha Trade Saloon in Portland from 1890 to 1901. He reappeared in Oregon in 1903 1905, and 1906 and once more from 1911 to 1914.
Eisele died in Oregon Metropolis in 1919.
His earlier Utah works from the Eighties show a mastery of the Hudson River College vocabulary—majestic, atmospheric, and finely detailed. Public sale data recommend there may be constant market curiosity on this interval of his work. In distinction, Eisele’s later Oregon work present a noticeable shift in type—marked by a sure naivety and mannerism. Related works provided via O’Gallerie up to now haven’t commanded costs as excessive as the sooner works.
It stays unclear whether or not this stylistic change stemmed from declining well being or just mirrored regional style. In any case, Oregon on the time was nonetheless a rugged frontier, and its rich patrons might have had little need to be reminded of the untamed nature or town’s nickname as “Stumptown.”
That stated, early naïve work are sometimes valued for his or her documentary high quality—for his or her skill to seize the long-lost particulars of historic locations. On this portray, as an illustration, Mount Hood looms prominently within the background. Its distinctive form means that the city depicted on the mountain’s base lies east of Cascade Locks. Whereas the public sale home description proposes both Hood River or The Dalles, a more in-depth take a look at the practice within the foreground reveals a telling clue: an in depth C.S.R.R. brand, referencing the Columbia Southern Railway, which solely operated between Biggs and Shaniko—a 69-mile route that didn’t embrace both city.
Nor would both Biggs or Shaniko have appeared as bustling because the city within the portray throughout the interval in query. It’s seemingly that Eisele created a composite scene, mixing iconic landmarks with components of business progress to craft a romanticized imaginative and prescient of Oregon’s improvement.
This composite nature is obvious within the portray’s puzzling proportions. Most notably, a Native American determine standing in entrance of a tipi seems considerably bigger than the practice chugging by—whose passengers resemble miniature dolls. The general impact is each whimsical and surreal, a folk-historic tableau filtered via the lens of reminiscence and fantasy.
Whether or not or not this portray instructions a excessive bid on July 14, it’s a fascinating artifact of an artist on the crossroads of custom and alter, grappling with the way to painting a brand new American West.
