I recently acquired a remarkable oil painting from a friend and longtime Skagway resident, depicting a sawtooth mountain range and the foot of a glacier in the foreground. According to the previous owner, it was painted here in Skagway in 1922 by Eliza Barchus, a prolific American landscape painter (1857-1959). We know that Barchus was visiting her local friends, the Dedman family.
Here’s the mystery: the precise location which it depicts is not known. The sawtooth range looks awfully familiar to me, but no one I’ve spoken to so far can quite place it. It’s likely that the glacier in the foreground has receded significantly in the century since it was put to canvas. So now I open this question to all you art history sleuths: where exactly was this painted?!
You can contact me through the comment section below, or by sending a DM to my husband Reed McCluskey on Facebook. Once we crack the mystery, I’ll post the names (if you like) of the winning guesses.
