According to Laurence’s biographer, art historian Kesler Woodward, a number of accounts indicate that Laurence attended the Peekskill Military Academy in Peekskill, New York, between 1870 and 1885.
According to Laurence’s biographer, art historian Kesler Woodward, a number of accounts indicate that Laurence attended the Peekskill Military Academy in Peekskill, New York, between 1870 and 1885.
1888
1914
1914
1915
1928
1928
Sydney Mortimer Laurence was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 14, 1865, to Edward Z. and Katherine Marris Leefe Laurence. Edward Laurence was an officer in the Union army during the American Civil War, and after the war worked in New York City, first in “wines” and later as a “broker.”
According to Laurence’s biographer, art historian Kesler Woodward, a number of accounts indicate that Laurence attended the Peekskill Military Academy in Peekskill, New York, between 1870 and 1885. There are assertions that Laurence studied art with the maritime painter Edward Moran, brother of Thomas Moran. There are numerous colorful, conflicting, and uncorroborated accounts of “running away at sea” at the age of sixteen or seventeen for a period of from one to four years. By 1887 he was painting in New York City, and in 1888 and 1889 had work exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York City.
Laurence continued to live in England exhibiting in England and at the Paris Salon. Laurence was also an illustrator-correspondent for several publications, including the British magazine Black and White starting in 1895, and, possibly, for the New York Herald during the Spanish-American War. In a 1934 interview for the Seattle Sunday Times, Laurence gave a colorful account of being clubbed over the head by a Zulu warrior while covering the Matebele Zulu Wars in South Africa in 1894, which resulted in the loss of hearing in his left ear. In 1900, he was promoted to special war artist by Black and White magazine and continued as an artist in the Boer War and the Boxer Rebellion and also began work as a professional photographer.
Laurence’s work with Black and White magazine continued until 1903, when he apparently left London for Alaska to search for gold, abandoning his wife and two sons, Leslie, age eight and Eugene, age one. He arrived first in Juneau and obtained temporary work as a photographer. Hearing of gold discoveries in Cook Inlet, he prospected there and in the surrounding area. He left for Valdez sometime in 1904, prospecting for gold and working odd jobs in the winter. In November and December 1904, Alexandrina and their two sons sent several Christmas photograph postcards, addressed to Laurence at “Tyoonok (sic), Alaska”, and were the last known communications between him and his family. Laurence’s movements during his early years in Alaska are difficult to follow.
Laurence painted pictures of the Tyonek area while he stayed with Durrell Finch, the representative of the Alaska Commercial Company. The Anchorage Museum has a 1905 painting by Laurence, “Tyonek, Alaska”, which is dedicated to Finch. In 1906, Laurence acted as Finch’s agent for a mining claim on Ramsdyke Creek. He also filed several mining claims in the Talkeetna recording district in his own name.
By 1909, Laurence was at various times in Cordova, Seldovia, and Seward. He painted “Cordova Bay” (1909), a 14-foot panorama, which is in the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington. Nellie Brown, a close friend of Laurence, stated that he worked with photographer E.A. Hegg in Cordova in 1907 or 1908. Laurence painted the bay from a nearby mountaintop, on commission from Hegg, who employed him to hand-tint photographs for a brief period. Hegg made other small artistic efforts that had a pivotal effect on Laurence’s life by reawakening his neglected talent. In the 1910 U.S. Census, he is listed as living in Beluga, married twenty years, and his occupation given as “mining.” In 1911 he was perhaps in Tacoma, Washington, as there are several paintings signed “1911, Tacoma.” In 1912, he painted in Seldovia and beach mined near Ninilchik on the Kenai Peninsula.
Early in 1913, Laurence was grubstaked with $400 in gold and a letter of credit by a group in Valdez to paint Mount McKinley for exhibit at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. He camped south of the mountain during the summer, returning to Valdez in the fall, and through the fall and early winter painted a 6-foot x 12-foot view of Mount McKinley. The painting “Top of the Continent” (1914) was accessioned into the National Collection of Fine Arts of the Smithsonian Institution in 1915. The piece remained in the custody of the Smithsonian Institution for more than fifty years, but it was later removed from the collection and has passed into private hands.
In 1915, Laurence moved from Valdez to Anchorage, where he worked as a laborer on the Alaska Railroad, gold miner, and photographer, taking portraits at his photographic company in the Carrol Building on Fourth and E Streets. The following year he moved his office to the Harmony Theatre. While not mining in the Cache Creek area near Talkeetna, Laurence lived at the new Anchorage Hotel, operated by Mr. and Mrs. Frank I. Reed. In 1919, he began to sell his paintings at Belle Simpson’s Nugget Shop, a well-known gift shop in Juneau. By 1920, he opened a studio in the Anchorage Hotel. By 1922 his paintings become more popular, and he closed his photography studio to pursue full-time painting. He continued to prospect, now for oil as well as gold in the Talkeetna recording district.
Laurence built up a reputation for his landscape and marine art, which was popular among Alaska residents as well as visitors. By 1923, he had been recognized as Alaska’s most prominent painter. President Warren G. Harding purchased one of Laurence’s paintings when he visited Alaska to open the Alaska Railroad. When Austin E. “Cap” Lathrop, a Fairbanks businessman, made the silent film melodrama, the Chechahcos (1923), Laurence painted the decorative borders for the subtitles and a series of six large landscapes that were used as transition frames in the film. The art that he produced for the film introduced his work beyond Alaska, and he opened a second studio in Los Angeles in 1924. For the remainder of his life, Laurence spent his winters in California and summers in Anchorage. Laurence began to produce paintings for Carl Block of Peoria, Illinois, to be sold in Block’s department store throughout the 1930s.
In 1931 he had an exhibit at the Ebell Salon in Los Angeles, listed as his first exhibit in thirty years. He also had a slight stroke that affected his coordination and painting style later that year. In 1933 he gave up the studio in Los Angeles, although he continued to travel between Los Angeles, Seattle, and Alaska. Sydney Mortimer Laurence died in Anchorage on September 11, 1940 after suffering a stroke. According to the Anchorage Daily Times, he had astonished his wife and friends the day before by announcing that he was going to die. Laurence was buried in the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery.
Sydney Laurence adhered to the artistic traditions of Romanticism.
In 1894, Laurence became a member of the Salmagundi Club in New York City, which included among its members several artists who were considered “tonalists,” a term for a new style of American painting which flourished from about 1880 to 1915; it was largely forgotten until the 1970s. Laurence continued to live in England, becoming a member of the Royal Society of British Artists.
On May 18, 1889 Laurence married Alexandrina Dupre, a fellow artist in New York City. Several noted artists, including Thomas Moran, and instructors at the Art Students League of New York attended his wedding. The couple, less than a week later, sailed for England to pass the summer on the scenic coast at St. Ives, Cornwall. Their stay at St. Ives, a fishing village and art colony, extended for nearly fifteen years.
In 1928, Laurence married a young French painter, Jeanne Kunath Holeman, in Los Angeles. Jeanne joined Laurence in Anchorage in the summers and Los Angeles and Seattle during the colder months. Jeanne Laurence died in Anchorage on August 13, 1980.
