School Days, 1913

2012 Oil on Canvas
24″ x 18″ framed in old frame found in a ‘ghost ranch’
$1300
Contact to Purchase

Why or where this picture was taken is not known – except it was early spring, 1913, and the little chap at the far right of the painting was Sigurd Rudie.  The children were dressed to the hilt, so all knew the box camera would take their photo.  Perhaps it was the first known school bus in the Sidney area, perhaps in all of Montana, where getting children to and from school was not easy in difficult winters.  In the Miles City area, the problem was sometimes solved by having one mom and all the children live the winter in a dug-out structure built near the school.  Another was setting a wooden, mobile, one-room class within walking distance of students’ homes.  Different solutions were involved families’ banding together to build roads to carry their children on horseback or buggy to schools.  If a family was large enough, the teacher would just live with them or in another structure on the ranch and teach there.  Others had to leave their families to attend schools in neighboring towns.  As to Sigurd, not dressed quite as fancy as the others, he and his family were new arrivals in the United States that year from Norway.  He and his grandmother became U.S. citizens in 1919.