Why People Are Paying So Much for Alden Mason’s Paintings

Ten years after his death, the Seattle painter is having a moment. Reporter Margo Vansynghel discusses the increased interest in his work.

When Alden Mason was in the prime of his career, he was well-known among those who followed art in Seattle and those who collected it. Yet the artist from Skagit Valley never saw the success of other 20th-century Northwest painters like Morris Graves and Mark Tobey. 

Now a recent surge of interest in Mason's work has put his legacy a little closer in kind to that of those so-called Northwest Mystics. 

Of particular note have been the sale prices of his paintings at multiple auctions, which have doubled in just the past year. 

For this episode of Crosscut Reports, guest host Mark Baumgarten talks with Vansynghel about her quest to understand why Mason's art is having a moment, what it tells us about the current art market and, surprisingly, how it might have inspired an alleged fake.

Read our full report on Alden Mason and his increasingly popular paintings here. 

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Credits

Host/executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

Reporter: Margo Vansynghel

Producer: Seth Halleran

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