Roadhouse paintings by Marge Gull
I was doing internet research and came across some roadhouse paintings done by Genevieve Marguerite (Marge) Gull. The image I included is her painting of the Timberline Roadhouse, which was a one-year-only roadhouse that operated during the winter of 1905-06.
According to an obituary I found (Marge died in 2013), she and her husband came to Alaska in 1938, living first in Fairbanks and then Anchorage. She was an amateur painter and “painted all 49 roadhouses that were on the Valdez-to-Fairbanks Trail.”
I assume that many of the paintings were done from photographs since the roadhouses in questions disappeared long before Marge came to Alaska. Still, the paintings are kinda cool.
The Valdez Museum appears to have most of the paintings, and the images are online. Here is the url for the museum’s online collections: http://www.valdezmuseum.org/collections/online-collections/
A description of the image is on the back of each painting (also available online). I think the descriptions come from the book Roadhouses of the Richardson Highway, by Walter Phillips.
Check the paintings out. I’ll be adding more paintings periodically.
