Oregon Public Library Eagle’s Nest Art Gallery receives three historical paintings

OREGON – The Eagle’s Nest Art Gallery at Oregon Public Library has three more unique artworks depicting two iconic physical features along the Rock River thanks to a donation by Jonathan Berg.

Berg, a retired Northern Illinois University geology professor, donated three paintings – all works by the same artist, Henry Howard Bagg.

Two of the oil paintings are of local scenes along the Rock River that are representative of Bagg’s early work: Black Hawk Bluff in 1887 and Castle Rock Bluff in 1888.

The third painting depicts the 1927 transatlantic flight of the Spirit of St. Louis. Bagg died in 1928, making the artwork one of his last paintings.

Berg said both of the landscapes originally were owned by Benjamin Franklin Sheets, known as Col. Sheets, who was an active citizen in 19th-century Oregon. Sheets delivered a speech at the 1880 dedication of Margaret Fuller Island.

Before Bagg became a prominent Nebraska artist, he lived in the Chicago area, where he painted landscapes and rubbed elbows with students and faculty of Chicago’s Art Institute. He paid frequent visits to scenic Oregon and gave painting lessons locally.

“This pair of historic landscape paintings confirms that the Rock River in Oregon has long fascinated artists. A decade before Art Institute-affiliated artists chose Oregon as the site of their colony, H.H. Bagg fixed his artist’s eye on the bluff where Lorado Taft’s statue of Black Hawk would one day stand,” library Director Elizabeth Green said.

Currently, the two local landscapes are on display at the Oregon Public Library District’s Eagle’s Nest Art Gallery.

The library’s upper floor originally was designed to display art and was officially dedicated in 1918 as the Eagle’s Nest Art Gallery. Many of the works hanging in the gallery today were donated by members of the historically significant Eagle’s Nest Art Colony, which was active locally between 1898 and 1942.

“Today, people come from the world over to visit Oregon’s Eagle’s Nest Art Gallery and see works by renowned artists such as Lorado Taft, Ralph Clarkson, Oliver Dennett Grover and Nellie Verne Walker,” Green said. “One of the gallery’s most well-known works is Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida’s portrait of Ralph Clarkson, which has been featured in international exhibits.”

Visitors can stop by the library and see these local treasures during regular operating hours from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday.