Wreck of the Ancon in Loring Bay, Alaska

Albert Bierstadt documented the wreck of the steamship Ancon in Loring Bay, Alaska in 1889, painting it during one of his visits to the Pacific Northwest. The Ancon had wrecked in 1889, making this painting a near-contemporary record of the disaster. Bierstadt's Alaskan works from the late 1880s are less well known than his Rocky Mountain panoramas but represent an important late phase of his engagement with American wilderness, capturing a landscape then still largely unknown to Eastern audiences. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston preserves this document of both art and maritime history.

Bierstadt renders the dramatic Alaskan setting with his characteristic mastery of atmospheric effect — glaciers and mountains shrouded in mist, the dark wrecked hull of the ship providing a melancholic focal point in the grey-blue composition.