Antique Hunt Picture Perfect
North Idaho has always been one of my favorite antique-hunting grounds. Over the years, this corner of the Gem State has yielded all kinds of treasures from collectibles to a six-legged Boston rocker. Once, on a canoe trip down the Pend Oreille, my husband and I retrieved a primitive bench we found near the river bank.
But my favorite find, a real jewel, came early in our collecting career. And like a true treasure, it involves mystery:
One spring afternoon a friend and I stopped to investigate a shop along the old highway to Hayden Lake. The place is no longer there and I can only guess where it once stood. Beside the shop sat a garage.
Pointing, the owner volunteered, “There’s some stuff out there, too.”
High up in the rafters I spotted a painting that looked to be about five feet long and four feet wide. Its massive, gilt frame had deep gouges along one side. Climbing a ladder to have a closer look, I discovered craggy mountains towering over a vast lake, an oil on canvas. In the painting, a cabin with smoke curling from the chimney nestled on the shore and a row boat rested on the beach beside a shed. A quarter-sized hole pierced through dead center and grime coated everything. Not altogether a pretty picture.
But we asked the shop owner, “How much?”
“Three dollars and a half.”
My friend and I checked our liquid assets. Between us we had exactly three-fifty. We didn’t dicker. It was a done deal. The shopkeeper hoisted the painting down and helped tie it to the rack on top of our compact car. Before setting out, the dealer told us that he had salvaged the painting from the burning pile where an old motel was being torn down.
Driving slowly back to North Spokane via back roads we were hit by a gusty, March rainstorm. Through open windows we held onto the frame of the painting which threatened to break the tie-downs and take off like a sail.
Once home, we had to deal with repairs. On the advice of Dr. John Koehler, Whitworth College art professor, we washed the canvas with a soft cloth, a little water and liquid dish detergent. Layers of grit and grime wiped away, revealing mountain summits tinted with pinks and golds. You could almost smell the smoke from the cabin’s chimney and hear the waves lap against the rocky shore. And down in the right-hand corner appeared a signature and a date. “Annie O’Brien 1897.”
Next we repaired the frame with filler, sanding the patches smooth, then rubbing the entire frame with a fresh coat of gilt. But still, that hole remained.
Koehler suggested cutting a piece, in the exact shape of the hole, from the excess canvas on the painting’s back. Carefully, we did so and glued it to a larger, cut piece that we then glued to the back to support the repair.
I had taken a class in oil painting and now I put my limited skills to work. Annie O’Brien had a lesson for me. I tried mixing the colors on the palette and then painting over the patch. It didn’t work. The artist had mixed her colors directly on the canvas. Once I caught on, I was able to make the repair almost invisible.
Today, “Annie” hangs in our living room, virtually covering the upper half of one wall. Long ago I bought out my partner. Few of our acquisitions have brought us as much pleasure as this one. In this picture, the light ever changes, reflecting the mood of the day. Dark, stormy weather beyond our windows causes a gloom to settle on the picture’s mountains and lake. Red sunsets deepen the pinks and golds of the mountains and clouds and dawn becomes the painting’s sunrise.
But the mystery remains. Who was Annie O’Brien? What ever became of her? A city directory for Spokane in the year 1897 says only that she lived on Second Street and was a student painter that year. With our own eyes we can see that she had talent. We do know of one other of her signed paintings. It also is large, and is of a forest and meadow. An antique collector now living in the Seattle area owns it.
That is the sum total of our information. Annie O’Brien has stepped into the shadows, leaving for us a treasure and a mystery.