A Painting for Two Pandemics by John Anfinson
by John O. Anfinson, Superintendent, Mississippi National River and Recreation Area
September 20, 2020
Like many, I am teleworking from my home office. Each day, I face a painting rendered by Gustav Klatt during the last pandemic for my grandfather’s wedding. Although it hung over my grandparent’s stone fireplace in Brainerd, Minnesota, my grandmother never liked it. Gustav painted it for another woman, his niece, Bertha Klatt, who died in the Spanish flu’s second wave before she could marry my grandfather. It hangs in front of me, dated 1919, a reminder of how a pandemic can change lives and one’s own history.
The painting came to my parent’s house in Benson, Minnesota, when my grandmother passed away. Mounted over their fireplace, it provided the backdrop for our family gatherings, every grandchild held up to it to see the bugling elk, in front of the waterfall highlighting its head. Maybe that is why we called it the “Elk Painting.” We never called it the waterfall painting or the mountain painting; we never called the painting for what it was – the valley of Yosemite National Park, featuring El Capitan and Bridal Veil Falls.
When my mother passed, the painting traveled to my house in Shoreview, Minnesota. I had long since completed my advanced degree in American history and was employed by the National Park Service. Its tie to the last pandemic made it part of the American narrative, and, working for the National Park Service, the painting felt a part of my own story. I had no idea how much deeper my connection would become. I did not know I would become Superintendent of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service, guiding my staff and park through the pandemic of our time.
The painting has demanded much of me. It looked anemic against the light-colored brick of my fireplace. So, I covered the brick with a stone-like facing that reminded me of my grandparent’s fireplace and that better fit its mountain disposition. The canvas had dulled from resting above smoky fireplaces and from the yellowing of its lacquer. So, I had it professionally cleaned. The painting approved. I hadn’t noticed the yellow flowers among the rocks and fallen logs or the rust colored trunks of the ponderosa pines or the blue of the Merced River or the bright white of the snow-capped Sierra Nevada Mountains. The entering storm clouds had not seemed so ominous.
As the sun climbs, filtering through my blinds, the painting begins to glow with a warm light, and I can imagine standing in Yosemite Valley at sunrise, and I wonder: Why did Gustav choose Yosemite? Was it the couple’s honeymoon destination? I’d love to get back there. But unlike the last pandemic, which stole the young, it is I who am in the higher risk category, and I worry that a second wave will sweep over us like that of 1919. Every day, the waterfall reminds me of the bridal veil denied by the last pandemic, and the painting demands that I not take this pandemic lightly for my park or myself.
Gustav’s painting is not fine art. He does not rank among the great painters of Yosemite, like Albert Bierstadt. If he ever visited the national park, the exaggerated mountains in the distance suggest an excess of artistic license. Yet his work is priceless to me. Bertha could not join with my grandfather in marriage, but her story and mine are forever wedded to this painting.
