Cape St. Elias 1928

Sydney Laurence made this painting of Cape St. Elias with what looks like oil on canvas, though I can’t say exactly when. There’s a real immediacy to it, especially in the way the rocks are rendered. It's like Laurence was wrestling with the paint, trying to capture the fleeting essence of a monumental landscape. Look at the sea, how he layers those greens and blues with such visible brushstrokes. There’s a kind of organised chaos that makes the water feel alive. The sky, too, is a flurry of grays and whites, mixed wet-into-wet, which softens the light and lends the picture a real sense of atmosphere. It reminds me a bit of some of Winslow Homer's seascapes, that shared fascination with the power of nature and the drama of the elements, but with a distinctive, almost romantic touch that's all Laurence's own.