Mount Maude

George Morrison painted this view near Grand Portage, Minnesota, while visiting his brother Bernard. While Bernard worked for the forestry service watching for fires from a tower, Morrison painted Mount Maude outdoors in one uninterrupted session. Soon after making this work Morrison left Minnesota to study in New York, where he encountered alternative ways of working and shared ideas with new circles of friends. From 1945 onward he made abstractions from nature, some radical in design and in their treatment of paint. The Minneapolis Institute of Art purchased the painting from an exhibition the same year, making it Morrison’s first work to enter a museum collection.