Unusual Antique Old Plein Air Forest Fire Tree Landscape Oil Painting, 1910s

  

This is a fascinating and Unusual Antique Old Plein Air Forest Fire Tree Landscape Oil Painting on canvas, after A. Denisov-Uralsky's (1864 - 1926) world famous painting titled Lesnoi Pozhar or "Forest Fire, " created in 1900 and originally meant to be shown to the wider public in the 1904 St.

Louis World's Fair's Russian Exhibit. This masterpiece was reproduced in color in several newspapers, under the title The Untamed Element. This publicity inspires numerous high quality oil painting copies in the mid 1900's - 1910's, such as this one.

This artwork is a magnificent adaption of Denisov-Uralsky's work, and a faithful period copy of the original. This painting depicts a raging forest fire in the dense forested woodlands of the Urals Mountain range of the former Soviet Union. Approximately 22 inches tall x 42 inches wide x 2 inches deep including frame. Actual artwork is approximately 16 x 36 inches. This piece appears to be unsigned, but perhaps you recognize the artist or their work?

Good - Fair condition for well over a century of age, with several small tears to the canvas (which have been patched up, utilizing several pieces of another oil painting, which is visible on the verso) and moderate to heavy edge wear and gilding loss to the original period early 20th century wood frame please see photos carefully. Acquired from an old collection in Pasadena, California. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! The Continuing Odyssey of "The Forest Fire" Painting.

The saga of how one of the most famous paintings of a forest fire was created and what happened to it resembles at times an international spy thriller. (Untamed Art, Fall 2008) by historian Stephen J.

Pyne tracked that mystery but had no ending because no one could say where the original painting then was. Nearly a decade later after the article appeared, he picked up the trail. It's the archetype globally for most prints, and probably most paintings, of a forest fire. But the reproductions come themselves from earlier reproductions.

Is a mammoth painting created by the Russian artist, A. The story, briefly, is this. Alexei Kuz'mich Denisov-Uralsky was born in 1864 in Yekaterinburg, grew up in the family trade crafting displays of semi-precious stones, then moved into painting, particularly scenes from the Urals; for years he was the very epitome of a starving artist.

He obsessed about painting fires on the landscape, from grass fires to crown fires. His breakthrough came in 1900 with an exhibit, "The Urals in Art, " in which he displayed his climactic effort. He agreed to contribute the massive painting 198 by 270 cm; 78 by 106 in. To the Russian exhibit headed to the 1904 St. The Russian pavilion, however, was dismantled shortly before the fair opened out of pique over American support for Japan in the Russo-Japanese War.

Instead, the 600-piece exhibit was displayed on consignment to a Russian entrepreneur named Edward Grunwaldt. Denisov-Uralsky's masterpiece won a silver medal and was reproduced in color by several newspapers under the title. The reproductions were themselves reproduced, copy after copy, for advertising, fire prevention posters, calendars, and simply as prints. Reproductions appeared in silk tapestry and on porcelain teacups. Or printed on items for sale on Etsy.

Through various frauds and incompetence, virtually every piece of Russian art entrusted to Grunwaldt disappeared. The artists got nothing and heard nothing. Ended up in the hands of Adolphus Busch, the beer magnate, who in 1926 hung it in the foyer of a hotel, The Adolphus, he was refurbishing in Dallas. In 1950 it was relocated to the hospitality room of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery in St. Then, in 1979, for reasons that are still murky, August Busch decided to donate the painting to the U. Government, which, through the vehicle of the National Endowment for the Humanities, repatriated it to the Soviet Union. Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin alluded to plans to send it to a museum in the Urals. In fact, it had again vanished. In 2014 the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts hosted a major exhibition on Alexei Kuz'mich Denisov-Uralsky, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth. It tracked down many of his fire paintings, but was unable to locate.

The Russian embassy in Washington, D. No art or political authority in Russia knew where it had gone. Months after the exhibit had ended, however, word came that the fugitive painting may have been located in the basement of a museum in Tomsk. A photograph and measured dimensions suggest that it is in fact the elusive original. As yet no one has positively identified it nor restored it, but the curator of the Yekaterinburg exhibit, Ludmila Budrina, is confident this is the original.

Has passed yet another way station on its long odyssey homeward. Pyne is the author of numerous books on the history of wildfire around the world. His most recent publications are. Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary Americ. The world's most famous painting of a forest fire is also its most misidentified.

Anyone even casually familiar with fire art or the least bit curious about pre-photographic images of wildland fires will recognize the scene instantly. The focal point is a slow-swirl pillar of flame rising through a patch of boreal forest. The fire gathers in a ragged eddy along the forest floor before sweeping upward against the wind and twisting through the canopy with a convective heave and a reverse eddy of flame and smoke. The symmetries are nearly perfect; sky and earth balanced with a layer of mossy forest between them; the deep woods wedging to the center and there cleaved evenly by that archetypal spiral of flame.

The painting has been widely reproduced, and variations on its scene abound in various media, with varying internal proportions and sizes. Some versions insert fire-scarred pines; some even include a cottage and firefighters. You can find them in color lithographs hanging in kitchens, old garages, even a few bars, and bins at second-hand stores. Forest Service has a black-and-white print in its historic photo collection.

A Bavarian ceramics company reproduced it on porcelain plates. Pre-World War II Japan manufactured facsimiles using silken thread. Grandma Moses copied the scene, as have other American primitives. A Wisconsin woman won a folk art festival by submitting a variant she painted, fraudulently claiming she reproduced the image not from a reproduction on her living room wall but from real-world fires remembered from her youth.

Others insisted that the scene commemorates the 1871 Peshtigo fire. Aleksei Denisov-Uralskii (1864 - 1926) was active/lived in Russian Federation. Aleksei Denisov Uralskii is known for Painting.