Suzan From peruses an Arnold Friberg painting at Cross River Heritage Center in Schroeder June 4. The exhibit is one of several that visitors can enjoy this summer season.
A June 4 reception for artists whose work will be featured this season at the Cross River Heritage Center in Schroeder brought 117 people together. Not only did they relish the smoked fish, crackers, cheese, and fellowship, they enjoyed tastes of local art and a special exhibit of Arnold Friberg paintings on loan from the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth, which has been in possession of the paintings since 1981.
Arnold Friberg is well known for the depictions of Royal Canadian Mounted Police he painted for the Northwest Paper division of Potlatch Corporation. Many who spent time in Cook County decades ago remember Friberg’s Royal
Canadian Mounted Police
pictures on Potlatch calendars displayed in gas stations and restaurants throughout the
area.
Cross River Heritage Center volunteer Barb Livdahl, a lettered wordsmith who assists the Schroeder Area Historical Society with publications, put together some information on the work of Arnold Friberg to accompany the exhibit.
Potlatch used images of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in their advertising “because their reputation for dependability, honesty, and performance was precisely the message Potlatch wanted to convey about its fine printing papers,” Livdahl wrote. The Northwest Mounted Police was established in 1873 “to bring peace and order to the Canadian prairie.”
Chicago ad-man and promoter Frank I. Cash commissioned 400 Mountie paintings by 15 artists for Potlatch products ranging from calendars, sample books, and notepads to broadsides and ads.
“These images became an unforgettable symbol for future growth,” the exhibit text states. “The Mountie illustrations became one of the most successful and long-running campaigns in American advertising histor y.”
Friberg was born in 1913 in Winnetka, Illinois and now lives in Utah. He painted over 200 Mountie subjects between 1937 and 1970. His paintings were the result of thorough research of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, First Nations Canadians, and the northern landscape.
In those paintings, Friberg depicts things like a Mountie striding along with his dog, shaking hands with a voyageur, observing a vista with his horse by his side, pointing something out to settlers crossing the prairie, saying goodbye to a European settler and his First Nations wife who is carrying a baby in a tikkanogan, and fixing a doll for a First Nations child.
Friberg was the chief artist and designer for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1957 film The Ten
Commandments,
earning him an Academy Award nomination. In 1978 Friberg was commissioned to paint near-life-size equestrian portraits of Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II with their horse Centennial. Friberg was awarded a lifetime membership in the Royal Society of Arts in London, England.
Friberg describes himself as a storyteller. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” he is quoted as saying. “That’s why I went into illustration.
“I want my art to be perfectly understood. One of the things I work for is clarity. That doesn’t mean hard-edged forms, but clarity of the picture – what time of day, what kind of lighting, where it is. It should all be clear. I hope no one ever has to explain my pictures.”
His pictures are indeed in living color on the walls of the Cross River Heritage Center. They are so clear and brilliant it is almost as though one could walk right into them. Walking right into the Cross River Heritage Center to view Friberg’s paintings is an action that is well worth the time.
Other exhibitors through
the summer and fall are:
Ron Krueger
Kathy Gray-Anderson
David Hahn
Joan Beard
Bruce Palmer
Ann Ward
Mary Jane Huggins
Larry & Linda Dunlap
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