Four restored Glacier Park murals now on display

Four of the 15 murals rescued from Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier are now on display at the Hockaday Museum of Art.

It took four men to hand the fully restored four-by-eleven foot mural in the Hockaday’s mezzanine gallery on May 2 — Joe Abbrescia, Jr., Steve Johnson, Denny Kellogg and Bill Goodman.

The murals were donated to the museum by Leanne and Alan Goldhahn and restoration of the fourth mural was made possible by a donation by the Baldridge family.

Early visitors to Glacier Park Lodge were treated to architectural and visual grandeur inside the building almost as expansive as the surrounding landscape. Louis Hill, president of the Great Northern Railway, favored eclectic Victorian and Western themes and filled the lodge with paintings, photographs and artifacts.

According to Hipolito Chacon’s article in “Montana The Magazine of Western History Summer 2010,” the murals were commissioned to fill the long horizontal spaces above the wainscoting. They appear to be based on photographs and were painted using water based tempera on canvas stretched on panel.

The scenic panels covered hundreds of square feet and appeared in a 1939 Glacier Park Lodge inventory as “51 watercolor panels.” There is some evidence that well known Glacier National Park artist John Fery intended to paint the panels and had drawn up some preliminary sketches.

Hill, however, decided to hire a muralist to expedite the process. The paintings are not signed, and no history or record has been found identifying the artist. Numbers and locations on the backs of the panels tell where they were hung in Glacier Park Lodge.

All of Glacier National Park’s lodges were remodeled in the 1950s, and the new design mostly required removal of the murals. A select few were left to provide “needed color accents.” The murals were cut from the moldings, removed from their panels, rolled up and discarded.

Leona and Robert Brown, of East Glacier, saved 15 of the murals and stored them at their home. The murals were passed down to their granddaughter Leanne and her husband Alan Goldhahn. In September 2012, Leanne donated the murals to the Hockaday in memory of her grandparents.

Eleven murals remain to be restored. For more information, call the Hockaday at 406-755-5268.