{"id":81123,"date":"2024-01-30T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/?p=81123"},"modified":"2024-01-31T08:42:14","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T14:42:14","slug":"revisiting-frank-ashford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aberdeenmag.com\/2024\/01\/revisiting-frank-ashford\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting Frank Ashford"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2017, the Alexander Mitchell Public Library was moved into the brand new K.O. Lee Aberdeen Public Library. I was a board member at the time (still am, actually), and took interest in the library\u2019s collection of original oil paintings by the late Aberdeen artist Frank Clifford Ashford. The new library included space for the collection to be permanently displayed.<\/p>\n

In our January\/February 2018 issue of Aberdeen Magazine,<\/em> I wrote my first piece about Ashford and the Aberdeen collection. The Dacotah Prairie Museum has a small collection of paintings as well; however, they are typically not on display. They also have Ashford\u2019s paint palette and other studio equipment from his apartment. I mention in that story that Frank Ashford has skirted Google search results for the most part, making modern-day researching about him a bit tricky. There were a few mentions of his paintings that sold at auction in recent years, and each auction house used the same regurgitated bio of Ashford. That told me that no one has taken the time to actually \u201cput\u201d Frank Ashford on the internet. Not even ten paintings showed up in image searches. Ten. That\u2019s a shockingly low number considering the man painted continuously from 1904 to 1960. So, after my article, I convinced my team at McQuillen Creative Group to make me a basic website where I could digitally \u201cstore\u201d all the paintings I find by Ashford. At this point, I have collected nearly 80 paintings.<\/p>\n

I keep saying \u201cI\u201d in this story, but I have had help over the years. I\u2019ve met Corey Schuh, who is a serious regional historian and desires to bring back home as many Ashfords as we can obtain. He and I believed that we would contact painting owners and relieve them of their paintings for a nominal fee. We held this sentiment because Ashford wasn\u2019t well known, and had no current-day notoriety, thus people would not want their paintings. We were completely wrong. We have not found anyone willing to part with their paintings. Our goal was to add paintings to the collections at the library or museum so they would be preserved and displayed perpetually (we still have that goal). So far, we\u2019re batting zero.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 2021, South Dakota Magazine <\/em>got wind of me snooping around the Human Services Center in Yankton. In the early 1920s Ashford was commissioned to paint 11 paintings for the Dakota Hospital for the Insane in Yankton (now the HSC) to help create a more calming environment for the patients. By 1990 there were five left. When I got there in 2021, there were only three. Writer John Andrews from South Dakota Magazine<\/em> chatted with me about our research then wrote an extensive story about Ashford and our quest. However, none of our efforts would be possible if it weren\u2019t for the previous research work done by the late Francis \u201cPeg\u201d Lamont. Andrews describes Lamont\u2019s Ashford quest in great detail in his article, all based on a paper Lamont presented at Augustana College in the early 1990s. The paper is a literal treasure map of Ashford\u2019s paintings. However, there are very few Xs marking the spots. Lamont passed away several years ago and I\u2019ve been in communication with the Lamont family to try to obtain her research material and photos. I did receive probate material from a law firm that handled his affairs upon his death. There were photos of some paintings we had not seen before in the files, and we found many notes that Peg referenced in her paper (she did all her research way before the internet).<\/p>\n

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