Maine's Rocky Coast
Surf in Watercolor
Surf in Watercolor
by Eight Noted Artists,
the earliest born in 1849
and the oldest died in 1995,
with their art in these six museums:
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, ILBoston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME
Monhegan Museum of Art and History, Monhegan Island, ME
Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, Portland, ME
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Surf, Splash, Waves
The Sea, Maine (Deer Isle)
John Marin (1870-1953), American
Watercolor and charcoal on paper, 20" x 17" (w x h), 1921
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Source Wiki edited and added to:
John Marin (1870-1953), American, spent his first summer in Maine in 1914 and almost immediately the rocky coast there became one of his favorite subjects. Over the rest of his life, Marin became intimately familiar with the many moods of the sea and sky in Maine. "In painting water make the hand move the way the water moves," Marin wrote in a 1933 letter to an admirer of his technique. Though he painted at many places along the Maine coast, he never painted on Monhegan Island, where many famous artists of his day painted, because he preferred to find his own places. Eventually he had a home at Cape Split in Addison, Maine.
Neptune Churn
Vincent Andrew Hartgen (1914-2002), American
Watercolor on paper, 26" x 20" (w x h)
Gift of the artist
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine
Source Museum Notes edited and added to:
Vincent Hartgen was head of the art department at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine when I was a student in the late 1960s. He grew the art department while he also painted abstract watercolors inspired by the Maine landscape, coast and nature. During his life he was awarded the Black Bear Award, the Distinguished Professor Award and even became an honorary doctor of fine arts at the University of Maine. Born on January 10, 1914, in Reading, Pennsylvania, Hartgen was an artist from an early age. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and during World War II (1942- 1945) he was a camoufleur, or a person who designed military camouflage. Hartgen arrived at the University of Maine Orono in 1946 and taught until his retirement in 1982. He passed away on November 27, 2002, at the age of 88. He was a prolific artist, creating an estimated 2,000 signed paintings and drawings and an equal number of sketches.
Pounding Surf, Portland
Frederick J. Ilsley, (1855-1933), American
Watercolor on wove paper, 12" x 9", 1932
Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, Portland, Maine
Source Cincinnati Art Gallery edited:
Frederick Julian Ilsley (1855-1933) was born and died in Portland, Maine. He was a self-taught artist, and a member of: the Portland Society of Artists, the Salmagundi Club, the Rockport (MA) Art Association, the American Artists Professional League, the Hayloft Club, the American Federation of Artists, and the Brushians Club, Portland Maine. He exhibited at the Society of Independent Artists 1925, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 1931. Ilsley worked as an engineer for Cumberland County Power and Light, and later the owner of his own business, Ilsley & Cummings, company of civil engineers on Exchange Street in Portland. As a member of the Brushians Club he traveled with the group at least once a week to paint throughout Maine and New Hampshire on painting excursions. He was known to other members of the Club as the Politician and looked to by the group to add spice and insight into conversations.
Seascape with Rocks (Monhegan Island)
Henry Newell Cady (1849-1935), American
Watercolor on paper, 19" x 14" (w x h)
Monhegan Museum of Art and History, Monhegan Island, Maine
Source askART and Wiscasset Bay Gallery, edited:
Henry Newell Cady (1849-1935), was born and died in Warren, RI. He was known for his seascapes of the New England coastline with a sensitive touch for capturing the effects of sky and sunlight conditions as they affected the sea and rocky shoreline in ever-changing rhythms. As a self-taught painter, Cady exhibited amazing ability at a young age. One of his paintings from 1869, when he was twenty, of seacoast waves crashing on the rocky New England shore, hangs in the John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, RI. Cady attended Brown University, studied art at the National Academy of Design, and was a member of the Providence Art Club. Cady exhibited at many prestigious exhibitions, was an illustrator for several national magazines, composed piano music, even after he began to go deaf, and photography.
Ted Davis (1908-1995), American
Watercolor on paper, 14" x 10" (w x h), 1956
Gift of James B. Wyeth
Monhegan Museum of Art and History, Monhegan Island, Maine
Source askART edited:
Ted Davis (Louis Theodore Davis) (1908-1995) was born and died in New York, NY. For nearly fifty years he summered on Monhegan Island. He likened the island to a big cruise ship. It never went anywhere, but the passengers and the atmospheric changes were constantly changing. From the late 1940s to the end of his life, Ted's work became increasingly abstract yet it always contained elements of the natural environment. The early work, influenced by Hans Hoffman "push-pull theory" used Marin-esque brush strokes to imply a setting, rather than utterly define it. Ultimately, these brush strokes resolved themselves into blocks of color--a fish shack, a boat, and a buoy. From the 1960s to the 1990s he created prismatic layers of thin color, each layer overlapping and intersecting another. Was it the sun that shone through the center of these works? Ted Davis was a beloved figure on the Island. Many collectors and friends were devoted to his work and through him were educated to the world of modernism. His artistic skill was summed up by the painter and The New Yorker cover illustrator and fellow summer islander, Charles E. Martin, who called Ted "the best watercolorist on the island."
Thundering Sea (Monhegan Island)
James Edward Fitzgerald (1899-1971), American
Watercolor on paper, 26" x 20" (w x h)
Monhegan Museum of Art and History, Monhegan Island, Maine
Source various edited:
James Edward Fitzgerald (1899-1971), known for his watercolors, was born in Milton, MA and died at Isle of Aran, Ireland. In 1924 at 25-years-old he made his first trip to Monhegan Island. In 1928 he shipped to the West Coast as a seaman aboard a freighter, then settled in Monterey, California from 1928 to 1943 where he lived and painted. In 1943 he sold his studio in the Monterey hills and moved to the former home of his friend Rockwell Kent on Monhegan Island, ME where he spent much of his later career painting in his unique style. This house is now a part of the Monhegan Museum. He made many trips to Jamaica, Nova Scotia, the Canary Islands, and the Isle of Aran off the coast of Ireland.
Sunken Ledges (Ogunquit)
Charles Herbert Woodbury
Watercolor on paper, 29" x 21" (w x h), 1933
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Source Wiki edited:
Charles Herbert Woodbury (1864-1940), born in Lynn, MA and died in Jamaica Plain, MA, was a close buddy of John Singer Sargent and a President of the Boston Watercolor Society. His earliest work was part of the group later known as the Lynn (MA) Beach Painters. While an undergraduate at M.I.T. he became a regular exhibitor at, and at 19 the youngest member of, the Boston Art Club. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degree in Mechanical Engineering, in 1886 Woodbury had great success painting up the New England coast in the towns and beaches of Nova Scotia, exhibiting the results. From January to June 1891, he was a pupil of the Académie Julian in Paris, and then went to Holland, where he studied the techniques of the modern Dutch painters. Returning to New England, he settled in Boston for his winter studio and spent his summers in the small fishing village of Perkins Cove, Ogunquit, Maine. In 1897 he founded one of the most successful of the summer art colony schools that even survived his death, the Ogunquit School. In 1928, Woodbury, along with a group of other area-artists, founded the Ogunquit Art Association. Woodbury was one of the most sought-after teachers of his generation, having begun teaching on a regular basis while a freshman at M.I.T. Ironically, he had little formal training himself other than a few months of classes at the Academy Julian in Paris. Woodbury maintained a close friendship with John Singer Sargent and a pleasant acquaintance with many of his contemporaries including J. Alden Weir and Childe Hassam.
The Washerwoman
Sears Gallagher (1869-1955), American
Watercolor on paper, 19" x 15" (w x h)
Monhegan Museum of Art and History, Monhegan Island, Maine
Source Wiki edited:
Sears Gallagher (1869-1955), was born in South Boston, MA and died in Roxbury, MA. He was an American artist proficient in drawing, etching, watercolor and oil painting. His work consisted largely of landscapes, seascapes, and cityscapes depicting his native Boston and northern New England, especially Monhegan Island, Maine. Illustrating magazines and books provided steady work and income, and his etchings and prints attracted popular demand. Gallagher took his art seriously, adapted new techniques, and was open to the influence of European Impressionism. During the height of his career his watercolors were favorably compared to those of Winslow Homer and F. W. Benson, and his etchings and drypoints to those of James McNeill Whistler.
No comments:
Post a Comment