This beautiful reproduction poster has been re-mastered from an original 1920s advertising poster titled “Off to The Potlatch” from the Northern Pacific Railroad. It was painted by famed artist Sydney Laurence, and features a group of native Alaskans in fishing sailboats, with a rugged mountainous coastline in the background.
The native Alaskan Athabascan people celebrate the Potlatch, which is a ceremonial distribution of gifts and food, to honor the deceased.
The vibrant colors and detail of this classic image have been painstakingly brought back to life to preserve a great piece of history.
The high-resolution image is printed on heavy archival photo paper, on a large-format, professional giclée process printer. The poster is shipped in a rigid cardboard tube, and is ready for framing.
The 13"x19" and 24”x36” formats are excellent image sizes that look great as a stand-alone piece of art, or grouped as a visual statement. These posters require no cutting, trimming, or custom framing, and a wide variety of these frames are readily available at your local craft or hobby retailer, and online. The 24”x36” poster has a 1” white border.
A great vintage print for your home, shop, or business!
NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD & ARTIST SYDNEY LAURENCE
The Northern Pacific Railway (reporting mark NP) was a transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest. It was approved by Congress in 1864 and given nearly forty million acres of land grants, which it used to raise money in Europe for construction.
Construction began in 1870, and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former President Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in western Montana on September 8, 1883.
The railroad had about 6,800 miles of track and served a large area, including extensive trackage in the states of Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin. In addition, the NP had an international branch to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The main activities were shipping wheat and other farm products, cattle, timber, and minerals; bringing in consumer goods, transporting passengers; and selling land.
ARTIST SYDNEY LAURENCE
Sydney Mortimer Laurence was born in Brooklyn, New York and studied at the Art Students League of New York. He married Alexandrina Fredricka Dupre in 1889.
He exhibited regularly by the late 1880s. He and his wife traveled to England, settling in 1889 in the English artists' colony of St. Ives, Cornwall from 1889 to 1898. over the next decade he exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists and was included in the Paris Salon in 1890, 1894, and 1895, winning an award in 1894.
Laurence left his family, moved to Alaska in 1904, and became the first professionally trained artist to make the state his home.
Laurence painted a variety of Alaskan scenes in his long and prolific career, among them sailing ships and steamships in Alaskan waters, totem poles in Southeast Alaska, dramatic headlands and the quiet coves and streams of Cook Inlet, cabins and caches under the northern lights, and Alaska Natives, miners, and trappers engaged in their often solitary lives in the northern wilderness.
In May 1927, Laurence married Jeanne Kunath, a French-born artist who had emigrated to the United States in 1920. He died in Anchorage on December 10, 1940.