Northern Lights

Sydney Laurence was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 4, 1865. He studied at the National Academy of Design and spent a number of years working in Paris and throughout England. Drawn by the prospect of gold, Laurence journeyed to Alaska in approximately 1905 and remained there for much of his career. Laurence was fascinated by the peculiar qualities of the Alaskan light. He met this new environment with excitement as an accomplished artist witnessing a fresh scene for the first time. In creating his visual definitions of the landscape, he often eliminated traces of humanity entirely, or dwarfed them in dramatic portrayals of the Alaskan landscape. "That predominance of the land over man has been lost in the American West by Laurence's time, and in Alaska it was already under seige. But by giving us that powerful image of humans in an earlier, more subordinate relationship to the mountains, the sea, the cold, and the northern lights, he has allowed a few more generations to feel the magic of the frontier." (Kesler E. Woodward, Sydney Laurence Painter of the North, University of Washington Press, 1990, p. 21)

In Northern Lights, Laurence has boldly contrasted a dancing curtain of Aurora lights against a dark winter landscape. The composition is a careful construction juxtaposing the vastness of the Alaskan landscape and the other-worldliness of the lights against the distant comfort of a warm cottage. The yellow, green and blue tones of the Aurora are reflected in an expansive snow covered field. Beneath this shimmering sky, Laurence has delicately handled the colors and forms of the nocturnal landscape with a tonalist palette. In works such as Northern Lights, Laurence made the Alaskan landscape his own, uniquely capturing the rugged terrain.