So I was digging through the archives at Milwaukee Public Library Special Collections about a month ago, mostly just rummaging with no direction, only pulling things that caught my attention. That’s usually how it goes when I’m out in the wild.
An old newspaper clipping caught my eye, “Oregonian Files Solve Picture Mystery: Painting Located in Eastern Museum”. Below it was a picture of a painting I remember Leslie the archivist at the Pfister told me about. She had mentioned once that there was some kind of mystery behind one of our lobby paintings. I’ll be honest, I forgot most of the details, but I remember there was still much about the painting that wasn’t known.
Turns out the story is even stranger than I expected.
The painting hanging in the back hall of the Mezzanine called “Still Life,” is actually the third and final version of a more complicated story.
Around 1905, an artist named Richard LaBarre Goodwin painted “Oregon Game” in a Portland hotel studio, on the spot, using Theodore Roosevelt’s actual hunting hat, dog whistle, leather pouch, and powder horn, borrowed from the Lewis and Clark Exposition where they were on display. He even shot ducks in the Columbia Slough for props. That original got famous enough that Portland tried to buy it for $2500 as a gift for Roosevelt.
Then it vanished. Some think it burned.
Goodwin painted it again from memory, twice. One version ended up mislabeled in a Springfield, Massachusetts museum for decades under a totally different name, “Hunter’s Equipment,” until a 1947 book cross-referenced it and set the record straight. The other version is ours. It’s been in The Pfister’s collection since 1915.
I find it fascinating that Goodwin painted the composition again. A memory of a memory. It made me start wondering, would this technically still be an original? It’s not the first one he painted, but it’s also not a print either. And would the two that are left now be worth as much as the original, since that one can’t be found? In my experience dealing in antiques and working in an auction house, I think this would be quite the conundrum if it ever went up for auction. Who knows. What do you all think?