275c
The Slag Dump
FES Title:
[no title entered in day books]
Alternate Titles:
Date: 07/1906
Size: 36″H x 24″W
Medium: oil-on-canvas-bracket
Type: illustration
Published: Connolly, C.P. “The Fight of the Copper Kings.” McClure’s Magazine, May 1907: frontispiece.
caption: A Night Scene at a Big Butte Copper Reduction Plant

The Du Pont Magazine, May 1928: cover.
caption: The Copper Mining Industry

Schmidt, Dorey. “Dear Editor: Dear Frank:” The American Magazine 1880-1940. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1979: 45.
no caption

Fluor Magazine, Vol.XXXVIII. No. 3: frontispiece.
caption: The St. Joe collection of mining paintings spans the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is international in scope with an emphasis on American artists and topographpy. This painting, titled Copper Mining, Butte, Montana, was painted by Frank Earle Schoonover in 1906.

Swibold, Dennis. “The Education of a Muckraker, The Journalism of Christopher Powell Connolly.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Summer 2003: 9.
caption: Though it was accused of bias, “The Story of Montana” launched Connolly’s career, and he went on to write three more articles for McClure’s detailing Heinze’s court battles with Standard Oil’s Amalgamated Copper Company and others. F.E. Schoonover illustrated “The Fight of the Copper Kings” with The Slag Heap as well as many of his photographs.
Inscription: lr: F E Schoonover /Butte, Mont. July ’06
Annotations:
Exhibitions:
Comments: index; edit
information requested in: Maine Antique Digest June 2005: 31-B.
Commentary: While on his trip west in 1906 on a photography assignment for an article by Lincoln Steffens, Schoonover visited Butte, Montana, to investigate the copper mining industry there for McClure’s Magazine. C.P. Connelly, editor at McClure’s sent him with a letter of introduction: “Will you once more do me a favor and show my friend, the bearer, Mr. F.E. Schoonover of New York, the Washoe smelter [at the Anaconda Mines]? I know you will take proper care of him and I want him to feel as much a home as a stranger can.” (archives, correspondence)
Schoonover photographed the Amalgamated Copper Mines and created this painting of ‘The Slag Dump.’ It and six of his photographs appeared in the C.P. Connolly story probing the litigation between Heinze and Amalgamated Copper Company. The article and images revealed significant information about the copper mines and the turbulent legal and political history of Montana during the early 1900’s.
See related photograph by Schoonover of a smelter in Butte, Montana. (#275cp)
Provenance: Artist; Schoonover Studios, Ltd., Wilmington, Delaware; Bartfield’s, New York, New York (circa 1975); St Joe’s Corp; acquired by Fluor Corporation; acquired by private collection, Australia