Born in Readfield, Maine, Theodore Richardson grew up in Minnesota and settled in Minneapolis, serving as supervisor of drawing in the public schools there for many years. He was trained at Boston Normal Art School and later traveled and studied art in Europe. Richardson also painted frequently in California, where he met his wife Flora, a Monterey artist, but he is best known for his Alaskan watercolors.

Between his first visit to Sitka in 1884 and his death in 1914, the painter became one of Southeast Alaska’s most faithful, prolific, and accomplished artist-visitors. Richardson made his first trip at the urging of a friend who loaned him the money for a ticket, and he visited nearly every summer thereafter.

Richardson’s deft watercolors and pastels range from landscape views of the coastal mountains of Southeast Alaska, usually shrouded in rain and fog and often painted from an offshore rowboat, to complex scenes of Tlingit house exteriors and interiors. Many of the latter include a wide variety of faithful representations of architectural details and objects of Native manufacture.

The artist’s work is represented in the collections of a number of major institutions, including the National Museum of American Art, Fogg Museum at Harvard, and the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta.

Braarud Fine Art is interested in all works by Richardson.