Landscape artist David Rosenthal has been working on his most recent body of work for over four decades.
Rosenthal’s exhibit, “Painting at the End of the Ice Age,” is currently on display at the Anchorage Museum now through Sept. 14, and features 67 of Rosenthal’s paintings — though he has more. The Cordova-based painter has been documenting glacial icescapes for the last 45 years, from Alaska’s own glaciers all the way to Antarctica, where he spent more than five years over the course of a decade.
He says he does his best to show the fallback of ice across the “ice age” — roughly 13,000 BC to 2023.
“I wanted it to be seen as, not as ‘David Rosenthal, artist,’ I wanted it to be seen as a science and art exhibit,” he said.
Rosenthal first got a job in Alaska as a cannery worker in 1977. His downtime came on in the winter months, which happened to be his favorite season. He began to paint his surroundings, from Childs Glacier to Sheridan and Saddlebag.
Rosenthal says that the paintings are based on his own field sketches, as well as historical and scientific studies — and are accompanied by reflections from himself — and biologists, geologists and oceanographers. In addition to mountainscapes in-state, Rosenthal’s exhibit intertwines scenes from scientific research trips across the Arctic, from Greenland to Norway, the Northwest Passage and Thule.
“This exhibit was unexpected in a sense, I didn’t know I was going to do it, and it just makes sense… one of the things about the exhibit that I try to stress is that all this time,” Rosenthal said. “I’ve been painting pretty pictures, and in some cases, I’m making things worse for the environment. I go to Antarctica all that time, come back with all these beautiful pictures, more people want to go. It’s always been one of those, ‘What am I doing here?’”
“Painting at the End of the Ice Age” has been in several museums across the state, including the Valdez Museum, Cordova Museum, the Pratt Museum and Alaska State Museum in Juneau. Rosenthal hopes to tour the show in the Lower 48 at natural history museums following its stay at the Anchorage Museum.
“Painting at the End of the Ice Age” is on display at the Anchorage Museum, located in the ConocoPhillips Arctic Gallery, on the second floor in the west wing.
Sam Davenport is a writer residing in Anchorage. She's a leo and a plant-person, and loves spending quality time with her dog, Aspen. She is a Real Housewives fan and has been called a Bravo historian.
