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Maine Moderns: Art in Seguinland,
1900-1940
June 4 - September 11, 2011
In the first half
of the 20th century a small group of American modernists chose to summer
in the mid-coast communities south of Bath, in a region that was 
then known as "Seguinland." Maine Moderns:
Art in Seguinland, 1900-1940, on view June 4 through September 11, 2011,
at the Portland Museum of Art, will feature more than 65 paintings, sculptures,
drawings, and photographs by artists such as Marsden Hartley, Max Weber,
Marguerite and William Zorach, Gaston Lachaise, Gertrude Käsebier,
and more. The exhibition will examine the close personal and professional
relationships of this group and the distinctive landscape that bound them
together. (right: Marsden Hartley (United States 1877-1943), Jotham's
Island (now Fox), Off Indian Point, Georgetown, Maine, 1937, oil on
board, 22 13/16 x 28 13/16 inches. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips
Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Museum purchase, 1938.41.)
Although much of their artistic activity was centered in
New York, along with their mentor the photographer and art dealer Alfred
Stieglitz, these artists all chose Maine as their summer home. It was there
that they developed a camaraderie and sense of place that strongly influenced
their work. The exhibition begins with an examination of pictorial photographs
by F. Holland Day, Clarence White, Gertrude Käsebier, and others taken
around Day's home in Georgetown and White's summer art school at the neighboring
Seguinland Hotel. Maine Moderns will take a look at the work of modernist
painters Max Weber and John Marin, who both showed their Maine images in
Stieglitz's New York galleries. In the early 1920s, the sculptor, Gaston
Lachaise, bought a summer home and studio in Georgetown and welcomed the
painter Marsden Hartley back to his native state, when Hartley returned
to work here in 1928.
Other frequent visitors to the Lachaise house during this
period included the photographer, Paul Strand, and the painters Marguerite
and William Zorach who had settled at the other end of Robinhood Cove not
far from the Lachaise house. Among the latter group, it was the Zorachs
whose work most frequently depicted this region.
Seguinland provided a unique artistic experience in Maine
and was distinct from the better known art colonies at Ogunquit and Monhegan
Island that were also active during this period. In those places, larger
numbers of both professional and amateur artists congregated for lessons
and exhibitions, intermingling with a tourist community. But the two coastal
areas south of Bath, Georgetown and Phippsburg, remained more isolated during
the first half of the 20th century. The few artists there were a select
group of individuals drawn by the distinctive coastline and their shared
interests in modernism. This is the first occasion to fully examine their
relationships to one another and the role of Maine in the broader development
of modernism.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a 170-page fully
illustrated catalogue with essays by Susan Danly, curator of photography
at the Portland Museum of Art and Elizabeth Bischof, assistant professor
of history at the University of Southern Maine, and additional entries by
Verna Curtis, curator of photography, Library of Congress; Gail Scott, independent
Hartley scholar; and Virginia Budny, author of the Lachaise catalogue raisonné.
The exhibition catalogue will be available in the Museum Store.
(above: Marguerite Zorach (United States, 1887-1968,), Clambake,
circa 1945, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches. Portland Museum of Art. Gift
of Unum Provident Corporation, 2000.8.2.)
(above: Gaston Lachaise (United States, born France, 1882-1935,)
Portrait of John Marin, 1928, bronze, 12 1/4 x 9 5/8 x 9 5/16 inches.
Collection of Lisa Marin.)
To view the exhibition checklist please click
here.
Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional
source by visiting the sub-index page for the Portland
Museum of Art in Resource Library.
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