Spirit of the North: The Art of Eustace Paul Ziegler

Known for capturing in his painting the spirit of the early twentieth-century Alaskan frontier, Eustace Ziegler (1881-1969) became one of the most celebrated painters of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest from its gold-rush period to statehood in 1959. He was one of the first artists from the United States to arrive in Alaska and was able to depict the 'Old Alaska' and the men who had pioneered the opening of the territory. This book was produced in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name organized by the Anchorage Museum of Art and exhibited May through September of 1998 at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, and subsequently at other museum venues. Though Ziegler was the son of an Episcopal minister in Detroit and destined, like his 3 brothers, to be ordained to the clergy, Eustace trained in painting at the Detroit Museum of Art and went to Alaska in 1909 well-equipped to live the pioneer life. Intending to minister, he captured on paper and canvas the exciting character of the fast-changing frontier life of the North. For the next 15 years, Ziegler was in integral part of that life. He traveled by pack train, dogsled, snowshoe, and boat in all seasons to the mining communities of the Copper River country. In the process, he served his church and accumulated many of the experiences, stories, and visual images which he would draw upon in his paintings for decades. This publication and the exhibition it accompanied were intended to examine in some detail the rich fabric of those Alaskan years, showing the way Ziegler's work as an artist became interwoven with his work as a priest.