Clay County Histories 

Markus Krueger | Program Director HCSCC

Painting conservator Melissa Amundsen recently drove to Moorhead to bring a painting home to the Hjemkomst Center. It looks much better now than when she received it. Melissa has spent the last few months lovingly restoring a painting of purple irises by Moorhead artist Sarah Ambs Moody (1873-1947).

Sarah was the daughter of pioneers. Her father, Fred Ambs, was one of Moorhead’s first bartenders when the town was founded in 1871, but he soon after moved to Glyndon. Young Norwegian immigrant Mary Gorder met Fred there, and the two were married. Sarah was the oldest of their four children. The Ambs (pronounced “Aims”) family moved to Moorhead in 1879. Their home was in the same building as Fred’s saloon on Center Avenue, right where the new Moorhead Public Library is being built.

After High School (class of 1891), Sarah went to Buffalo, NY, to learn the art of china painting. You know those fancy teacups with pretty flowers painted on them? In the olden days, those were hand painted by artists like Sarah. On May 20, 1895, she married Howard Moody, who owned a dry goods store in Moorhead. Sarah sold her painted china in their family store as well as her brother-in-law A. L. Moody’s dry goods store in Fargo. City directories around 1900 also list Sarah as a teacher at Concordia College.

Our historical society has three saucers we believe were painted by her, and also seven of Sarah’s paintings on canvas. One of them, a painting of irises, was in tough shape. She signed it “Sarah Ambs” so we can date it to before she married Mr. Moody in 1895. At some point, either in the half century that it was in her family’s possession or in the seventy years after her family donated the painting to our museum, it got wet. This water damage created mold, which caused much of the oil paint to crack and flake off.

Thanks to Minnesota’s Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment fund and the Minnesota Historical Society, we were able to hire Twin Cities Art Care to rescue this painting and bring it back to the way Sarah Ambs Moody originally made it. Conservator Melissa Amundsen cleaned off 130 years of dirt, dust, and mold in the gentlest possible way. She fixed canvas tears and carefully restretched it onto a new form. She put paint flakes under a microscope in order to match the 1890s paint as perfectly as possible. UV imaging and chemicals were employed in ways that I don’t understand, but that’s why Melissa Amundsen has the job she does. She’s an artist and a scientist. Melissa studied Sarah’s style as well as stacks of photos of purple irises so she could put new paint where the original flaked off, and in such a way that would be faithful to Sarah’s original. Melissa said she felt close to Sarah and had trouble parting with this painting after she drove it home to Moorhead.