| Date: | undated |
| Medium: | oil on canvas, lined |
| Size: | 30 x 50 in (76 x 127 cm) |
| Inscription: | l/r "F. Schafer", fraktur hand, underlined |
| Verso: | said to have been "Utah" on canvas before lining. upper stretcher bar, right "Emporium/B.293" in pencil. |
| Provenance: | With Willoughby-Toschi Gallery, San Francisco in 1976; to private collection, San Francisco. With Garzoli Gallery, San Rafael, California, 1989. With North Point Gallery, San Francisco, 1995; to private collection, New England, 1995. |
| Exhibited: | Pack-In Painters of the American West, Los Angeles, 1976 |
| Reproductions: | William K. Dick photo #19 (color, 1971); 1976 exhibition catalog, figure 38 |
| Site: | Unconfirmed, but apparently a few miles south of Salt Lake City. Based on the painting titles and other legends handed down with the paintings, the lake is called Bear Lake, the large central mountain is called Black Mountain, and the light-colored mountain on the left is called Crystal Mountain. But a search of Utah place names does not turn up any single location associated with all three names. |
| Description: | Dark clouds at the left, bright clouds in the center, and some blue sky amidst the clouds on the right stand above a black mountain profile with a snow-covered range behind it in the distance. In front of the black mountain on the left is a very much lighter and brighter beige cliff, standing above a lake which is mostly dark except for an indistinct reflection of the cliff. On the middle distance right stands a rocky brown hillside over which a stream drops in two waterfalls to reach the lake. Nearer, a grove of conifers stands near the right edge, and a brown bear approaches through a sun-basked clearing in front of two white boulders. Between the viewer and the bear lies the trunk of a fallen tree; another log lies behind the bear. (From the painting, 9 December 1989.) |
| Note: | Except for the background mountain described by the first sentence, the description above could also be applied to Albert Bierstadt's Mount Corcoran (1875?), which has a remarkably similar foreground. [Gordon Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt, plate 172, page 232.] Gilbert Munger's two paintings titled Mountain Lake with Peaks depict another very similar locale. Unfortunately, none of the locales of these three paintings have been identified. See the list of Wasatch Mountains, including Black Mountain, paintings for other paintings of this same scene from slightly different vantage points. |
| Identification: | The painting seen in 1989 and again in 1995 is the same as the one in the 1971 photograph. Since the verso inscription, now lost, was reported to just identify the state, the assigned title is based on three other nearly identical paintings that were titled by the artist. |
| Other title(s): | Passing storm, Wasatch Mountains, Utah (exhibition title) |
![[photo]](../smalls/p/img0654.jpg)