Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England at the Portland Museum of Art

June 24 - October 12, 2009

 



 

Gallery object labels for the exhibition

Yellow Walls Section 3

 
George Bellows
United States, 1882-1925
MATINICUS, 1916
oil on canvas
Bequest of Elizabeth Noyce, 1996.38.1
 
The opportunity for George Bellows to go to Monhegan arose in 1911, when Robert Henri invited him along on his first trip back to the island since 1903. On seeing Monhegan, Bellows wrote to his wife, "This Island is endless in its wonderful variety. It's possessed of enough beauty to supply a continent," adding, "I could stay here and work for years if you were here. This place is an eternal subject." In fact, he did return to Monhegan for two more summers, until concerns about the island's vulnerability with the onset of World War I kept him and his family on the mainland, first in Ogunquit and then, in 1916, in Camden. From Camden, Bellows set off on his own, exploring the island of Matinicus. During nearly a month there, Bellows used a fish house on the harbor as a studio, producing many views of the working waterfront.
 
 
Abraham J. Bogdanove
United States, born Russia, 1886-1946
ROCKY COAST, circa 1930
oil on canvas mounted on board
Gift of Owen W. and Anna H. Wells, 2001.83.3
 
Born in Minsk and raised in New York City, Bogdanove parlayed his artistic training at the Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design, and the Columbia University School of Architecture into a successful career as a mural painter. But soon after his first trip to Maine in 1915, his interests changed from historical and allegorical scenes to landscape. A visit to Monhegan in 1918 crystallized this new artistic vision, and by the 1920s, views of Monhegan constituted the bulk of Bogdanove's artistic output. The artist visited Monhegan annually every year until his death, painting extensively and becoming a pillar of the artistic community there.
 
 
Jay Hall Connaway
United States, 1893-1970
GULL ROCK AT HEADLANDS, 1948
oil on canvas board
Gift of Owen W. Wells and Anna H. Wells, 2003.43.18
 
Although the Indiana-born Connaway first visited Maine in the early 1920s, when he painted near Jonesport, his long association with Monhegan did not begin until 1931. In that year Connaway and his new wife returned to the United States after an extended period at the artist's colony in Pont-Aven, France. They sought to re-create some of that communal creative experience by living on Monhegan year-round and founding the Connaway Art School in 1939. For seventeen years they summered and wintered on the remote island, raising their daughter there and enjoying the varying ambience of community and solitude.
 
 
George Daniell
United States, 1911-2002
GROUP BY FISH HOUSE, 1936
lithographic crayon and crayon on wove paper
Gift of George Daniell and the Aucocisco Gallery, 2001.6.2
 
Daniell first came to Maine in 1937. As an artist he followed a well-worn path north from attending classes at the Art Students League in New York City to sitting in on Bernard Karfiol's course at the Ogunquit School of Painting and Sculpture and eventually finding his way to Monhegan. Drawn to the rugged individuals he found there, Daniell produced a photo essay of life on the island and sketched a number of salient moments as well.
 
 
George Daniell
United States, 1911-2002
FISH HOUSE AND SEA, 1936
gelatin silver print
Gift of Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., 2001.48.2
 
Daniell is best remembered as a portraitist and photojournalist for major magazines such as Time, Life, and Scribner's. Known internationally for his images of a young Sophia Loren, Daniell also photographed Audrey Hepburn, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Tennessee Williams, and a host of other celebrities in the mid-20th century. So strong is the narrative quality of his Monhegan photographs, they can themselves be considered portraits of the island.
 
 
 
Charles Ebert
United States, 1873-1959
UNTITLED (MONHEGAN HARBOR), circa 1925
oil on canvas
Gift of Peter H. Davidson, 1983.418
 
Certain places hold great currency in the history of American art. In the 19th century, an artist hoping to be taken seriously as a landscape painter needed to paint Mount Washington in New Hampshire, Niagara Falls in New York, or the Natural Bridge in Virginia. By the early 20th century, Monhegan joined the list. Ebert, an Old Lyme impressionist, hewed to an anti-modern worldview and framed his view of the harbor in a way that de-emphasized the fishing shacks and ferry landing in favor of an oblique glimpse out to open water.
 
 
 
Charles Ebert
United States, 1873-1959
FOOT OF THE CLIFFS, circa 1929
oil on panel
Florence Griswold Museum. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Bartels, 1978.7.10
 
Denizens of Greenwich and, later, Old Lyme, Charles and Mary Ebert made summer trips to Maine's Monhegan Island beginning in 1909. In Foot of the Cliffs, Ebert brought his high key impressionist palette to bear on a primal New England scene, the meeting place of rock and Atlantic wave. In this way, he merged the colors of the Connecticut plein air tradition with the drama of Maine's modernist imagery. In later years, the Eberts would begin to winter in Florida, yet they frequently returned to Monhegan to paint.
 
 
Charles Ebert
United States, 1873-1959
MONHEGAN HEADLANDS, 1909
oil on canvas
Florence Griswold Museum. Gift of Miss Elisabeth Ebert, 1977.18.1
 
Charles Ebert had been painting full-time for only a few years before creating Monhegan Headlands. In the 1890s Ebert had studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, the Art Students League in New York, and the Académie Julian in Paris. He tried with little success to make a living as a freelance illustrator before landing a steady job as the political cartoonist for Life magazine. After moving to Greenwich, Connecticut, in about 1900, Ebert began to study with the impressionist John Henry Twachtman at Cos Cob, and in 1903 Ebert's wife, Mary Roberts, another Twachtman student, convinced him to abandon illustration for landscape painting. The couple made regular trips to Monhegan beginning in 1909.
 
 
Ernest Fiene
United States, born Germany, 1894-1965
LOBSTERMAN'S GEAR NO. 1, 1950
oil on canvas
Gift of Owen W. and Anna H. Wells, 2008.43.11
 
Fiene studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League where he developed a talent for printmaking under instructors Joseph Pennell and Charles Locke. From 1938 to 1964, he served on the faculty of the Art Students League, and through connections there, he became associated with the Ogunquit School of Painting and Sculpture. Fiene spent two summers in Ogunquit in the 1950s, traveling to and painting in other Maine locations, including Monhegan. Lobsterman's Gear graphically illustrates the modernist interest in essentializing the subject by reducing an individual to a series of symbolic icons.
 
 
Ernest Fiene
United States, born Germany, 1894-1965
FISHERMEN, MONHEGAN, 1952
oil on canvas
Gift of Owen W. Wells and Anna H. Wells, 2007.24.5
 
The German-born Fiene spent two summers in the 1950s teaching at the Ogunquit School of Painting and Sculpture, founded by Hamilton Easter Field. During that time he painted in other Maine locations, including Monhegan Island. This painting graphically represents Monhegan's harbor through the filter of the artist's own modernist sensibility. Fiene has exaggerated certain landscape forms and articulated the scene as a jumble of angled structures and landscape forms, stressing the jagged forms of the rocks that echo the "V" shape of the flying gulls, the dories, the angled roofs of the fishing shacks, and the lobster buoys drying in the sun.
 
 
James Fitzgerald
United States, 1899-1971
ISLAND INN REFLECTED, circa 1964
watercolor and gesso on paper
Gift of Anne and Edgar Hubert, 1992.9.10
 
James Fitzgerald had achieved moderate success as a painter in Boston and California in the 1940s, when he set up a summer residence on Monhegan. There, he increasingly suffused himself in his painting and in the stunning natural landscape of Monhegan. An industrious worker in his studio, Fitzgerald was equally tireless when it came to his daily regimen of standing at the edge of the headlands for hours at a time to study the interplay between the rocks and surf, light and shadows.
 
 
James Fitzgerald
United States, 1899-1971
BLACK HEAD, MONHEGAN, circa 1954
graphite and watercolor on paper
Gift of Anne and Edgar Hubert, 1992.9.8
 
Blackhead -- the legendary northern cliffs of Monhegan Island -- rise 150 feet above the Atlantic. Accessible from a variety of vantage points high and low, the view has attracted artists of all stripes, from the late 19th century to the present day. Both Rockwell Kent and Edward Hopper reckoned with Blackhead from a distance. Fitzgerald moved in close and found the cliffs ideally suited to his inky palette and muscular use of the brush.
 
 
James Fitzgerald
United States, 1899-1971
FRANK PIERCE, circa 1968
oil on canvas
Gift of Anne and Edgar Hubert, 1992.9.11
 
Fisherman and owner of the Island Inn, Frank Pierce was an appealing subject for many of the artists and photographers who worked on Monhegan in the middle of the twentieth century. In this portrait Fitzgerald captures the stoic posture of the man at work at the water's edge, beleaguered by diving gulls, with the island of Manana looming in the background. Fitzgerald produced far fewer oils than watercolors during his lifetime, partly due to the time and expense involved with the slow-drying, costly medium. When he did use oils, however, he became highly involved with his materials, refusing to thin them with turpentine so as not to dilute their vibrancy. Fitzgerald was also a gilder and made many of his own frames, their simple lines echoing the spare elements of his art.
 
Murray Hantman
United States, 1904-1999
BLACKHEAD, 1951
oil on canvas
Bequest of the artist, 2005.27.5
 
Murray Hantman's artistic development parallels the sea change in American art that began in the years between the world wars and reached an apex with the abstract expressionist movement. Trained at the Detroit Museum of Art School and the Art Students League, Hantman became involved in the mural-painting movement and produced paintings for the Federal Art Project. A visit to Monhegan Island in 1945, however, marked a dynamic shift in Hantman's mode of painting. In an extended series of gouaches (opaque watercolors) of Monhegan's rocks and headlands executed in the late 1940s, he reduced the rocky landscape to its most elemental forms. Blackhead is the culmination of Hantman's experiments with light and color to describe the Monhegan landscape. With just three saturated tones, Hantman conveys the distinctive sweep and rise of Monhegan's headlands.
 
 
Robert Henri
United States, 1865-1929
THE GRAY WOODS, 1911
oil on panel
Gift of Pendred E. Noyce, 1997.3.1
 
New York teacher Robert Henri considered summer his "great season of work," in which he retreated to rural settings to concentrate on his own art. Between 1903 and 1918, Monhegan Island was a favored destination. He encouraged his most promising students at the New York School of Art -- including Edward Hopper, George Bellows, and Rockwell Kent, among others -- to join him there to paint and establish a community of modernist artists. For Henri and his students, Maine was a foil to life in New York. They sought simplicity, purity, and honesty as a counterpoint to the complexity of the modern city. They were drawn to Monhegan, in part, because it was conducive to work; the absence of the distractions of everyday life and the stimulus of new surroundings permitted sustained concentration. Monhegan also represented the sort of "primitive" locale to which Henri was drawn throughout his career, finding in it a sense of continuity and tradition.
 
 
Robert Henri
United States, 1865-1929
BARNACLES ON ROCKS, 1903
oil on panel
Bequest of Elizabeth Noyce, 1996.38.21
 
Henri was driven to marine painting, in part, by his admiration for the paintings of Winslow Homer, observing in them "the whole vastness of the sea, a vastness as impressive and uncontrollable as the sea itself." He sought to achieve a similarly unified view of the Atlantic, but with a modernist's eye and technique of vigorous brushwork. Henri committed himself to painting directly from nature, using small, rigid panels that could easily be carried over Monhegan's uneven turf.
 
 
Edward Hopper
United States, 1882-1967
MONHEGAN HOUSES, MAINE, circa 1916
oil on panel
Museum purchase with support from the Bernstein Acquisition Fund, Board Designated Acquisition Funds, Director's and Curators' Hamill Acquisition Fund, Friends of the Collection, Homburger Acquisition Fund, Osher Acquisition Fund, and an anonymous gift in memory of the Bears, 2007.1
 
Like many of those who painted on Monhegan in the early twentieth century, Edward Hopper studied at the New York School of Art under Robert Henri, whom he described as "the most influential teacher I ever had." His first encounters with Maine's landscape were in Ogunquit, where he spent the summers of 1914 and 1915 (Henri and George Bellows were there as well) painting country roads, local buildings, and the rocky coastline.
 
In the summer of 1916 and for the next several years, Hopper ventured farther north to Monhegan, one of the few artists to go there during World War I. In Monhegan he encountered a dramatically different Maine landscape from what he had seen and painted in Ogunquit. Nevertheless, he continued to turn his artistic eye toward the built environments that had always drawn his attention, in New York and elsewhere. This oil sketch shows Hopper's characteristic interest in mass rather than the dynamic forces that attracted his colleagues Henri and Bellows. Like them, however, Hopper used small panels such as this one, which he could easily carry all over the island's landscape and townscape, facilitating the practice of painting and inhabiting a scene at the same time.
 
 
Eric Hudson
United States, 1864-1932
MANANA, undated
oil on canvas
Gift of Mrs. Eric Hudson, 1934.5
 
Although he studied at Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where a polished academic style predominated in the final years of the nineteenth century, Hudson developed an aesthetic that was uniquely his own. His palette of deep yet vivid tones is coupled with a thick, layered application of paint, resulting in a crusted surface that is almost architectural in feel, like the crumbling texture of masonry or pilings emerging from the water. Here, the enclosing presence of Monhegan's geography-the limited expanse of the protected harbor and the looming monolith of Manana in the background-serves to distinguish Hudson's work from that of his contemporaries on the island who reveled in the ocean's expanse.
 
 
Eric Hudson
United States, 1864-1932
MONHEGAN HARBOR, circa 1898
oil on canvas
Gift of Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., 2008.31
 
Boston-based Eric Hudson was in the vanguard of artists who painted on Monhegan, first visiting there in 1897, fully six years before Robert Henri made his own initial pioneering visit. Hudson soon built a home on the harbor, where he could have an unimpeded view of the moored boats, which were his favorite subject. Like the boats themselves, Hudson's paintings demonstrate an elegance of construction and an emphasis on color; light and dark elements are conveyed across the picture surface in a way that is balanced yet animated.
 
 
Murray Hantman
United States, 1904-1999
KITCHEN, 1953
oil on canvas
Bequest of the artist, 2005.27.6
 
Hantman's remarkable career witnessed the rise of abstraction to a dominant place in American visual culture. His initial Monhegan scenes explored the island's legendary geology with robust modern brushwork. In the years following World War II, however, he turned to seeing the island and its inhabitants as shapes, symbols, and colors. Kitchen is an early abstraction where Hantman has pared the interior of his cabin down to essential forms representing a gas light fixture, bead board, and linoleum tile.
 
 
 
Wilson Henry Irvine
United States, 1869-1936
MONHEGAN BAY, MAINE, circa 1914
oil on canvas
Florence Griswold Museum. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. George M. Yeager in Honor of the Centennial, 1999.10
 
Monhegan Bay, Maine portrays a stark change in the economy and daily life of this remote island some ten miles off the Maine coast. Where cod and lobster were once processed, now children and young girls play in the waves. Where ships collected the sea's harvest for transport to urban markets, city dwellers now disembark for a pleasant summer day visiting the "quaint" island. Paintings like this helped popularize Monhegan as a rustic summer resort in the 20th-century American imagination.
 
 
Rockwell Kent
United States, 1882-1971
WRECK OF THE D. T. SHERIDAN,
circa 1949­1953
oil on canvas
Bequest of Elizabeth Noyce, 1996.38.25
 
Rockwell Kent was the first student that Robert Henri encouraged to visit Monhegan. He arrived in 1905. Kent was as inspired by Monhegan's residents as by its dramatic and varied scenery. As he wrote to Henri, "I love the fishermen here. I never in my life saw such a fine kind-hearted set of people. I'd like to be one of them." With that wish in mind, Kent settled on Monhegan for the better part of the next five years, painting furiously and supporting himself through odd jobs as a carpenter, well driller, and lobster fisherman.
 
Wreck of the D. T. Sheridan dates to Rockwell Kent's return to Monhegan Island after a thirty-year absence. It exemplifies his mature style in its intense palette, crisp forms, and emphatic two-dimen-sionality. The painting depicts the rusting hull of a steel tugboat that ran aground at Lobster Cove in a dense fog in November 1948. None of the drama of that event is apparent in Kent's image, yet in its skeletal stillness it powerfully conveys humanity's subordination to the forces of nature.
 
 
Louis Lozowick
United States, born Russia, 1892-1973
MONHEGAN ISLAND, 1946
lithograph
Museum purchase with support from the Friends of the Collection, the Jensen Memorial Acquisition Fund, and the Print Acquisition Fund, 2009.5.1
 
Lozowick immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1906 and enrolled in art classes at the National Academy of Design and Ohio State University. He was entranced by scenes of American industrial might and traveled across the country painting images of steel mills in Pittsburg, copper mines in Butte, and lumber yards in Seattle. He is best known for his streamlined urban scenes, however, and for contributing to the revival of interest in lithography among graphic artists. In 1946 he traveled to the coast of Maine and found inspiration in the rugged geologic formations.
 
 
De Hirsh Margules
United States, born Romania, 1899-1965
UNTITLED (MONHEGAN ISLAND HARBOR), 1947
watercolor on paper
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harrison D. Horblit, 2003.21.2
 
Margules was a larger than life fixture in the Greenwich Village scene in New York City at mid-century. A painter, poet, and newspaper reporter, he embodied the bohemian spirit of the modernist social set. Born in Romania, his parents were prominent in the Yiddish theater. The family's penchant for dramatics can been seen in the artist's full name of Isaac Edward Cecil De Hirsh De Tannerier Gilmont Margules. Raised in the United States, Margules initially studied in Paris before returning to New York City and meeting Alfred Stieglitz and John Marin around 1929. Calling these well-known figures "my academy," Margules developed a flamboyant modern style that prized movement and color.
 
 
De Hirsh Margules
United States, born Romania, 1899-1965
LIGHTHOUSE, 1947
watercolor on paper
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harrison D. Horblit, 2003.21.1
 
Margules, known for his vibrant views of New York City, adopted the vitality and drama of his mentor John Marin when working in watercolor in Maine. Confidence and gesture is everything in this medium where a single brushstroke can evoke a mood or atmospheric condition. The bright sun of Monhegan proved especially seductive to Margules and his boldly colored abstract views capture the dazzling "feel" of the island.
 
 
Leo Meissner
United States, 1895-1977
CREVASSE, 1934
linocut on wove paper
Museum purchase, 1985.17
 
Meissner studied in New York at the Art Students League. Like so many students at that bastion of modernist thought, he found his way to Monhegan in the mid-20th century. Unlike most, he then summered on the island for nearly 50 years. The geological details of Monhegan captivated Meissner and proved to be particularly suited to his meticulous style. Meissner began his printmaking career by executing a series of linocuts in 1924, but soon turned to wood engraving-a traditional medium that he updated with a streamlined, 20th-century vision.
 
 
Edward Potthast
United States, 1857-1927
SEASCAPE (MONHEGAN), undated
oil on canvas board
Gift of Owen W. Wells and Anna H. Wells, 2003.43.10
 
Potthast frequented the coastal art colonies of New England, visiting Annisquam, Gloucester, and Provincetown before finding his way to Monhegan late in life. A letter that he wrote in 1926 sums up the attractions of the island off Port Clyde. "The most striking feature," he noted, "is that there are no automobiles, only a truck and one horse." Seeking authentic experience and the quiet life, Potthast found it on Monhegan.
 
 
Willard Metcalf
United States, 1858-1925
AN INLET AT BOOTHBAY HARBOR, 1904
oil on canvas
Florence Griswold Museum. Gift of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, 2002.1.91
 
Best known for his impressions of venerable old buildings and pastoral landscapes, it comes as a surprise to discover that Willard Metcalf was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, a mill city that became symbolic of the promise and pitfalls of the industrial revolution in modern New England. His trademark subjects reinforced the visual mythology of old New England and literally "fixed" upper-class anxieties about change and disorder in the twentieth century. Metcalf studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and exhibited along with Childe Hassam and other members of "The Ten" in a number of important New York venues. Popularity did not provide stability, however, and he lived as something of a peripatetic, moving from one New England watering hole to the next. Thrice divorced and often impecunious, Metcalf painted landscapes that depict a harmony absent from his personal life.
 
 
Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott
United States, born England, 1846-1925
MONHEGAN VILLAGE FROM HORN'S HILL,
circa 1892­1900
watercolor on paper
Gift of Sally W. Rand, 2002.48
 
In many ways the story of Monhegan as an art colony begins with Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott. Born near Portsmouth, England, Triscott studied at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, in London. He emigrated to Massachusetts in 1871, at the age of twenty-five, finding work as a civil engineer and surveyor while he continued to paint landscapes. Triscott had become one of Boston's leading watercolorists by the time he first visited Monhegan in 1892, taking along with him his friend and student, the young Sears Gallagher. So impressed was Triscott with Monhegan's openness and beauty -- especially after the urban congestion of Boston -- that he made it his full-time home by 1903, months before Robert Henri and his students ever set foot there.
 
 
Reuben Tam
United States, 1916-1991
WAVES AND BLACK LEDGE, 1949
oil on canvas
Gift of Mrs. Goran F. Holmquist, 1985.220
 
Along with Murray Hantman, Reuben Tam was part of a group of artists who lived in New York and participated fully in the international art scene there in the years after World War II, while spending every summer on Monhegan. Yet unlike Hantman, Tam's affinity with the island began long before he first visited there in 1946. While still in school in his native Hawaii, he saw reproductions of early Monhegan paintings by Rockwell Kent, and he became fascinated both with Kent's modernism and with the austere geography it depicted. For more than thirty years Tam divided his time between Monhegan and Brooklyn, where he taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. There he encouraged his students to approach landscape with an eye toward geological forces and change over time.
 
 
Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott
United States, born England, 1846-1925
UNTITLED [VIEW OF MONHEGAN], circa 1918
watercolor and gouache on paper mounted on board
Museum purchase with support from Friends of the Collection, 2006.26
 
Landscape was a fundamental interest to Triscott during his years on Monhegan. Over time he shifted from the kind of panoramic view he built his reputation on to studies of waves and cliffs and details of rocks and vegetation. Despite this change of focus, his virtuosic academic style remained unaffected by the modernist ideas and techniques around him. Triscott was also an accomplished photographer; accommodating a growing tourist industry on Monhegan, he produced elegantly composed black-and-white prints as well as hand-colored postcards. In doing so, he created iconic images of Monhegan's distinctive geological landmarks.
 
 
Andrew Winter
United States, 1892-1958
ISLAND HOME, MONHEGAN, 1947
oil on canvas
Gift of the Salamagundi Club, 1948.16
 
At the age of twenty, Andrew Winter joined the merchant marine, initially working on square riggers and eventually on steamboats. In 1921 he decided to become an artist and enrolled at the National Academy of Design. After finishing there in 1925, Winter received a traveling fellowship to study art in Rome and Paris. He then settled in New York City and developed a solid reputation as a seascape and landscape painter during the 1930s and 1940s. The combination of his love for the sea and the arts, no doubt, made Monhegan Island an ideal setting for his work. He frequently rowed around the island in a dory looking for unusual vantage points for his paintings and, at times, worked for the local fishermen. In addition to his paintings and watercolors, Winter built ship models, made wooden carvings, and even wove a tapestry from wool that he dyed himself -- a scene of Monhegan harbor based on one of his oils.

 

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