New Jersey, Amwell Press, 1988, 1st edition. 424 pp, b/w and 31 color illustrations. Many of the color images are full page, 11'' x 8 1/2''. The tall hardcover book is bound in green leather with gilt decoration and titles in a pictorial slipcase. Very Fine. No wear or flaws whatsoever.
The Amwell Press, for The National Sporting Fraternity Limited (NSFL), 1988. Number 276 of a limited edition of 1000, signed by the author and the President of NSFL. Teal Blue or Green bonded leather/leatherette printed in gilt, light blue moire silk endleaves, attached ribbon bookmark, with slipcase.
This is a large format book. Extra postage will be requested for Media Mail, Priority Mail and International Mail.
NUMBERED & SIGNED on the Limitation page by Robert H. Bates.
As famous in the annals of mountaineering as he is as an artist, Belmore Browne is best-known for his widely collected paintings of Alaska, Washington, California, and the Canadian Rockies. His paintings of animals and landscapes combine the attention to naturalistic detail of a naturalist and mountaineer with a bold, expressive painterly touch.
By age 20 in 1898 Browne was distinguishing himself as a hunter, mountain climber, writer, and illustrator. In 1902 and 1903, still in his early twenties, he served as hunter, illustrator, and specimen perpetrator for the well-known naturalist Andrew Jackson Stone’s Alaska and British Columbia mammal-collecting expeditions for the American Museum of Natural History.
With Stone, he explored the landscape and animals of the Stikine River region and parts of the Alaska and Kenai peninsulas. He returned to the Stikine River region of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia in 1904 and 1905 to hunt, draw, and collect specimens on his own.
After 1905, Browne turned his energy and attentions to mountaineering. He was part of a group that in 1907 made the first ascent of Mount Olympus in Washington State, but his real prominence as a climber grew out of his three pioneering attempts to climb Mount McKinley in Alaska. In 1906 he joined Frederick cook and Herschel Parker’s expedition to attempt the peak.
It was on this trip that Frederick Cook, after apparently being defeated by the mountain and sending most of his crew away, claimed to have reached the summit in a very short time with a lone companion — to the acclaim of the world and the skepticism of his own expedition members. Cook also claimed to have the first to the North Pole, both claims have been proved false.
Four years later, in 1910, Browne and Herschel Parker mounted their own expedition to the mountain, hoping to climb the peak but also seeking to disprove Cook’s claim. They were unable to find a route to the summit, but did locate the peak on which Cook had posed for a “summit” photograph, a minor promontory at an elevation of 5300 feet, almost twenty miles southeast of the top of Mount McKinley.
Browne’s final attempt to scale McKinley came in 1912. He and Herschel Parker were turned back by a storm just 125 feet short of the summit. Browne later wrote many articles about his experiences on the mountain and in 1913 published the beautiful book, The Conquest of Mount McKinley, an extensive account of all three climbs.
As his biographer Robert Bates noted, Belmore Browne was one of those lucky people who seem to have been born in the right time to make the best use of their interests and skills. Artist, writer, explorer, hunter, and mountain climber, Browne excelled in and made substantial contributions to each of these seemingly unrelated fields of endeavor, embracing them all in a remarkable life of personal discovery, expression, and achievement. His art drew sustenance from all those fields, so it is no wonder that he is now recognized as one of America’s preeminent mountain and wildlife painters.
