Francis Lee Jaques; oil on canvas, 1947
Minnesota Historical Society Collections

A French brigade of four canoes, paddled by voyageurs and loaded with baled furs, glides along Crooked Lake, a body of water between Basswood Lake and Lac La Croix in the Minnesota-Ontario border country. Above the brigade tower the cliffs of Picture Rock, which bear faint pictographs made by the area's early Indian inhabitants.

Picture Rock at Crooked Lake was painted by Francis Lee Jaques, one of the foremost wildlife artists of the United States, and presented to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1948 by Frank B. Hubachek, a Minnesota-born attorney and conservationist. Jaques (1887-1969) spent his formative years in Illinois, Kansas, and Minnesota's north country. He was internationally known for his bird paintings, and his quest for accuracy took him on expeditions to the Arctic, Polynesia, Panama, and the Bahamas. The area along the Minnesota-Ontario border remain perhaps his favorite scenery. From 1924 to 1942 Jaques worked at the American Museum of Natural History creating the two dimensional backgrounds and foregrounds for which he became so well known. In 1927 he married Florence Page, the writer. As a team They produced several books, including Snowshoe Country, set in northern Minnesota and the recipient of the John Burroughs medal for the best nature book of the year in 1946.

(Prints Copyright Minnesota Historical Society).