The Peshtigo Paintings
- Amanda Tague
- Dec 1, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Dec 3, 2018
The Great Chicago Fire has always been much more popular and has had multiple books and movies come from it. The Peshtigo Firestorm was barely on anybody's radar but it was a truly devastating fire of biblical proportions. Walls and whirling tornadoes of fire roaring down on a wooden town surrounded by a dry forest are described by survivor accounts. The horrific survivors accounts even state that some families upon realizing that they were corned by the fire, slit their own throats to avoid death by burning. It's certainly not surprising that this fire would elicit very emotional artwork.
Mel Kishner was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1915, forty-four years after the Peshtigo Firestorm. He was an artist that had a passion for landscape painting and Expressionism. He is best known for his water color works but Kishner did a series of oil paintings on the Peshtigo Firestorm that I think are incredible. Using the extensive survivor account of Reverend Peter Pernin and other survivor accounts that can be found on the Peshtigo Fire Museum's website, Kishner potrayed the helplessness and incredible loss caused by the fire.
In the first Peshtigo fire painting the colors of the fire are stunning and dramatic especially with hint of the black smoky sky. It looks like the brushwork of the sky is chaotic which contrasted with the detailed brushwork of the family, gives me a feeling of helplessness and loss of control. Most of the family is wrapped in blankets because according to survivors account they soaked the blankets in water to try avoid being burned. The family is wearing red, white and blue which I don't think is a coincidence, I think its a reference to America. The whole family has the same expression on their faces, which, obviously, is not a happy face. The painting as a whole is almost like an academic landscape painting.
In contrast to the the first painting, the second contains much less fire and focuses on the people in the town running from the fire. The townspeople are also wearing red, white, and blue in this painting. Kishner distorts the faces in this one along with highlighting them. They actually remind me a lot of the face from Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'. They are distorted in fear and anguish and many are holding their faces. In this painting there is a lot of movement, everyone is frantically running from the fire. The fire was incredibly fast and you can tell that the artist tried to show this by the panic and chaotic movement of townspeople and animals as the push each other around trying to reach safety.
The last painting in the series is the most devastatingly emotional. Similar to the second painting the peoples faces are distorted and highlighted, however it is more intense in this painting. The fire is less prominent and the river is a haunting red color which really unsettles the viewer. There are two other very obvious unsettling objects in this painting. The first is the horse that is clearly panicking in the middle of the river. I am not sure if it is freaking out because of the fire, or if it may be drowning because it was reported that there were 100s of bodies of humans and animals alike found drowned when the fire abated. The other super unsettling object is the woman running towards the river with just her head on fire.
As a whole, it is easy to see these painting are packed full of emotion.
Works Cited
Art Museum of Wisconsin. “Mel Kishner (1915 - 1991).” Museum of Wisconsin Art, 2018, www.wisconsinart.org/archives/artist/mel-kishner/profile-78.aspx.
“Home.” Peshtigo Fire Museum, Peshtigo Historical Society, 2017, peshtigofiremuseum.com/
Wisconsin Historical Society. “Peshtigo Fire I: Refuge in a Field.” Wisconsin History, Wisconsin Historical Society, www.wisconsinhistory.org/museum/exhibits/framed/peshtigo.asp.
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