Silver Town

• Title Silver Town
• Category Painting
• Medium Casein on canvas
• Medium Landscape, Pacific Northwest (subject or artist)
• Dimensions 11.25"h x 15"w
• Framed Dimensions 11.25"h x 15"w
• Year Completed undated
• Description Tonopah Nevada was a mining town that Heaney began to paint in 1941. Silver Town is an image of Tonopah founded after a silver strike. The mountain is Mount Oddie, and the church is a composite of actual structures as Saint Mary’s in Virginia City and the Catholic Methodist churches in Austin Nevada. In the actual town of Tonopah there is no hillside church. In his studio Heaney worked from memory, inspiration of other works in progress and from his collection of painted cardboard models of buildings. This piece is painted in casein which is a water-soluble glue made from the curds of milk.
• Notes Donated in honor of Mrs. Esther Marie Erickson Henager (Spokane and Tumwater). Mrs Henager was not privileged to continue her education, but realized the value of education, and of religion, and enabled a number of students to attend Whitworth through guidance, and by starting the Florence Hammond Scholarship Fund. Charles Heaney was a painter and printmaker born in Wisconsin and based in Oregon, where he moved as a teenager. During his teenage years, Heaney held a job as an apprentice to a jewelry engraver at Brandenburg Engraving Company. His experience with engraving jewelry would transfer to his printmaking career. In 1913 he moved to Portland. He later attended the Museum Art School now known as the Pacific Northwest College of Art. He took inspiration from his friend and fellow artist C.S. Price, adopting Price’s ideal of a simple life with an obsessive dedication to art. Price’s modern art and expressionist style were new to Heaney, and he was moved by the way that Price expressed himself in paint. Heaney primarily depicted the homestead or village and the empty rural landscape as he was devoted to depicting regions of Oregon. Heaney decided not to marry and remain celibate to devote his life as completely as possible to making art.
• Artist Charles Heaney American 1897-1981
• Credit Carlson Collection
• Location McEachran President's Office Reception
• Accession Number 1971.0003
• Status Checked Out
• Administration Admin View
  Edit Details