Post Office Mural – Mobridge SD

Description

The oil-on-canvas mural entitled “Return from the Fields” was painted by Elof Wedin in 1938. Wedin also completed a post office mural in Litchfield, Minnesota.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, the six-foot by 12-foot oil on canvas mural on the north wall of the lobby of the Mobridge Post Office, “Return From The Fields” by Elof Wedin, speaks volumes. Dakota bluffs comprise the backdrop, and the muted images transport us back in time to a gentler era. You can hear the muffled footfalls of the big roan draft horse and the jangle of the harness as he is driven home at day’s end by a mustached man in indigo jeans and red work shirt. A woven picnic basket which transported the noon meal is carried by a young woman who is accompanied by her husband, carrying a scythe; a middle aged woman carries a salt glazed stoneware water jug, and a young boy leads the procession with the family’s yellow farm dog, three generations of a South Dakota farm family. The faces register a degree of weariness mixed with pride for a job well done….

Born in Sweden, Elof Wedin immigrated to the Minneapolis and Saint Paul area in 1919. He supported himself as a boilermaker by day and attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in the evening. He later attended the School of Art Institute in Chicago.”

(mobridgetribune.com)