Lot 807: Large Atherton Furlong O/C, Lumberjacks w/ Oxen, 1893

Atherton Bernard Furlong (Canada/Maine, 1849-1919) oil on canvas painting with a team of oxen or cattle hitched to a cart filled with freshly-cut timber, 1893. They stand before a tall, dense forest while a logger or lumberjack at right carries an axe and a second figure tends to a steer. Signed and dated lower left. Housed in an ornate giltwood frame. Sight: 51 in H x 33 3/4 in W. Frame: 64 1/4 in H x 47 1/4 in W. Biographical Note: Atherton Bernard Furlong was born near Norway, Maine in 1849. A musician as well as a painter, he worked as a vocal music teacher in Toronto, where he died in 1919. He was the father of the noted American artist, writer, explorer, college professor, naturalist, collector, cowboy, and photographer of the American West, Colonel Charles Wellington Furlong (1874-1967). (Source: Adapted from Scituate Historical Society, Scituate, Maine, and the Atherton B. Furlong Correspondence, Maine Writers Correspondence, Maine State Libraries)

PROVENANCE: Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation.

CONDITION: 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch puncture to canvas to center right, in tree, and scratch to legs of oxen, lower center, 3 1/2 in L. Craquelure throughout especially to lighter pigments in upper left and in ground, lower third. Frame with abrasions and losses especially to upper right corner.