Viðey Island and Beyond

Viðey Island and
the Mountains Beyond

looking across Reykjavík Harbor, Iceland,
on June 28, 2021, painted on June 29, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and
Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Icelandic water, on 140 lb.
Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $150

Stonington's Iconic Green Head

Stonington's Iconic Green Head

seen from the Dockside Bookstore's Dock,
Stonington, Maine, painted plein air July 7, 2021
14" x 11" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $500

Seaside Forms

Seaside Forms

at Green Head in Stonington, Maine
painted plein air on July 6, 2021
8" x 10" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light
fastness and permanence, on 140 lb. Fabriano
Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton
extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

When Seaside Houses...

When Seaside Houses

Pop Up and Down

in Stonington, Maine, painted plein air on Church Street, July 6, 2021, 14" x 11" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper framed.
$700

Dock Waiting

Dock Waiting

at Green Head, Stonington, Maine
painted plein air July 7, 2021
8" x 10" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Boat Boat Rock

Boat Boat Rock

in the east harbor at Stonington, Maine
painted plein air on July 7, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Stonington Seaside Shapes

Stonington Seaside Shapes

seen from Church Street in Stonington, Maine, painted plein air on July 6, 2021, 14" x 11" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Prismacolor waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper framed.
$500

The plein air set up on Church Street.

Sun Dropping by Sand Beach, Stonington

Sun Dropping by
Sand Beach, Stonington 

in the early evening in Stonington, Maine
painted plein air on July 6, 2021
8" x 10" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Evening Home

Evening Home

in the east harbor at Stonington, Maine painted plein air on July 7, 2021 10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper framed.
$300 / NFS

Donated to the Springvale Public Library, Springvale, ME (www.springvalelibrary.org) for the fundraising Online Auction, April 14-20, 2025.

Likely That Marin House Study 1

Likely That Marin House Study 1

looking down School Street in Stonington, Maine,
based on a John Marin 1924 watercolor
painted plein air on June 30, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Inspired by:

Deer Isle, Stonington, Maine, No. 10
John Marin (1870-1953) American
Watercolor, charcoal, and pencil on paper,
18" x 15" (w x h), 1924
For sale: $140,000 USD

The plein air setup on the steps of the staff entrance to the Opera House, June 30, 2021.

Likely That Marin House Study 2

Likely That Marin House Study 2

looking down School Street in Stonington, Maine,
based on a John Marin 1924 watercolor
painted plein air on June 30, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Likely John Marin's 1926 School Street View in 2021

Likely That Marin House

Likely That Marin House

looking down School Street, Stonington, Maine, inspired by a John Marin 1924 watercolor (below), painted plein air, 12" x 9" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper framed.
$450

Deer Isle, Stonington, Maine, No. 10
John Marin (1870-1953) American
Watercolor, charcoal, and pencil on paper,
18" x 15" (w x h), 1924

New Art - Bruce Collection - Home Farm

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
New Art in the Bruce Collection
below...

1
In late October and early November 2018, I participated in the Brandywine Plein Air Festival, Pennsylvania, along with four other Maine artists, all friends. I enjoyed the autumn, my painting gear at the ready in my Ford Focus, seen here looking down from my hosts third-floor window. Little did I know the my Focus hood would have a new focus.

2
On the last painting day, November 1st, I was sketching a small watercolor in the parking lot of Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Winterthur, Delaware, where we were to leave our paintings for the show. Carol Douglas from Rockport, Maine had finished her painting for that day, and needed a flat place to frame it. My car's hood was perfect. And a few fresh oil paint smudges on the hood, easily wiped off.

3
Once the show was hung, we were each asked to submit one of our paintings for judging. While Carol was musing, I passed by and of course was partial to the one from my car's hood. But it truly was more than that. It stood out. And Carol, still not so sure, chose that one, and it was the Honorable Mention Winner with a cash award. Of course, I was thrilled.

Until July 8, 2021 it was still with Carol, when I was driving south from Stonington and stopped to say hello and peruse her gallery, and now it's part of my collection. I'm so proud to have this museum quality painting of Carol's in my collection. It's not only a painter's painting but it's a viewer's painting as well.

4
Home Farm
Carol Douglas, American
Oil on canvas, 20" x 16" (canvas art)
22.5" x 18.5" (framed) (w x h), 2018
Honorable Mention, Brandywine Plein Air Festival, 2018
Painted November 1, 2018, on the grounds
of Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library
(the former duPont Estate), Winterthur, Delaware

Why do I keep looking at this painting? Its simplicity is beguiling with the sure, smooth, broad brushstrokes. The strong geometric shapes define simplicity, form, and mass, their darks and lights adding depth. That brush stroke sky with the whitest cloud pulls my eye over the farm shapes, while that same long bright cloud's angle aligns with the field's brightest horizon angle, both leading my eye to the farm. The balance of the sky blue at the top right and the field in the bottom left, is one of those fine attentions to detail. And then there's that small sharp light yellow field highlights, perfectly placed to keep my attention on the farm. Plus, a hint of autumn color in the distance never overwhelms the painting, thus adding to it. I find myself intrigued by the shapes of blue in the sky and the broad stroke colors of the field.

And the final touch is the oil paint that was left off the canvas, keeping the Home Farm simple, that paint long ago gone from my Ford Focus hood.

It's easy to see why the judges chose Home Farm as a winner.

Why do you keep looking at this painting?

My friend Carol's art web blog Watch Me Paint is HERE.

Stonington Seaside Motion

Stonington Seaside Motion

alongside Sand Beach Road in Stonington,
Maine, painted plein air on July 5, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper framed, $150

The plein air setup, my car in the distance.

A beautiful day for watercolor painting plein air.

Stonington Spruced Up

Stonington Spruced Up

looking across the harbor in Stonington, Maine, painted plein air on June 28, 2021, 5" x 7" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press, rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed,
NFS

Up and Down in Stonington

Up and Down in Stonington

with the view from Church Street, Stonington, Maine, 
painted plein air June 30, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press
rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Stonington House Lines of Sight

Stonington House Lines of Sight

as seen from Church Street in Stonington, Maine,
painted plein air June 30, 2021,
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press
rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

That Stonington Blue House Study 1

That Stonington Blue House Study 1

in Stonington Maine painted plein air June 24, 2021 7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$150 / Private Collection

The Plein Air Setup

That Stonington Blue House Study 2

That Stonington Blue House
Study 2

in Stonington Maine painted plein air June 24, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300 - NFS - Gifted

The Plein Air Setup

That Stonington Blue House Study 3

That Stonington Blue House
Study 3

in Stonington Maine painted plein air June 24, 2021
7" x 5" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $150

The Plein Air Setup

Porter's Stonington View

Porter's Stonington View
91 Years Later

based on Fairfield Porter's 1930 Harbor View painting, close to
his same view since the buildings have changed, this view
from Ruth Yeazell's porch in Stonington,
of the once Central Garage, now art gallery,
painted plein air June 28, 2021
10" x 8" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $300

Harbor View (Central Garage)
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Watercolor on paper, 1930
Sotheby's 2015 April auction, Sold: $10,625 USD
Auction estimate: $2,000 - $4,000 USD
This was painted early in Fairfield Porter's career when he was 23-years-old.

A Fairfield Porter Gallery

A Fairfield Porter Gallery
Later Work in Maine (1972-1975)
3 Watercolors and 3 Oils

Fairfield Porter spent the seasonal warmer months of his life at his family's home on Great Spruce Head Island, Penobscot Bay. He said, "I've been to Maine almost every summer since I was six. It's the place where, most of all, I feel myself, to belong." (Fairfield Porter's Maine, Southampton, New York, 1977)

Fairfield Porter mused, "When I paint, I think that what would satisfy me is to express what Bonnard said Renoir told him: 'Make everything more beautiful.'"

The first painting below was painted the summer of 1975; he passed that September at 68-years-old. All six below were painted the last three years of his life, from 62 to 65-years-old.

1
North Point
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Watercolor on paper, 12" x 16" (w x h), 1975
Private collection

2
North Point No. 1
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Oil on board, 14" x 16" (w x h), 1972
Colby (College) Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine

3
Maine Landscape
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Watercolor on paper, 14" x 11" (w x h), 1973
Colby (College) Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine

4
High Tide
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Oil on board, 18" x 22" (w x h), 1973
Christies October 2020 auction sold: $162,500 USD
Auction estimate: $100,000 - $150,000 USD
Source: The Art of Fairfield Porter by K. Moffett, exhibition catalogue, Boston, 1982:
Portraying the rocky shore and coastal islands of the area, High Tide of 1973 reflects the artist's personal connection with the Maine landscape, while exhibiting the more abstracted aesthetic of his later works. Reducing and simplifying the landforms, what remains is a pure representation of his surroundings. As in all of Porter's best works, High Tide delights in exploring the line "between a reaction to natural light and a search for invented color."

5
From North Point
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Watercolor on paper, 1973

6
The Tender
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) American
Oil on canvas, 30" x 28" (w x h), 1973
Sotheby's December 2009 auction sold: $590,500 USD
Auction estimate: $150,000 - $250,000 USD

About Fairfield Porter
Source Wiki and Mary Ryan Gallery, (edited):
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) was an American painter and art critic. He was the fourth of five children of James Porter, an architect, and Ruth Furness Porter, a poet from a literary family. He was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus. Porter did not gain notoriety until later in his career, making most of his major works during the last two decades of his life. His first solo show opened at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in 1951. He was also a respected art critic and poet, writing for such publications as Art News, Arise, The Nation, and the Partisan Review. An artist of wide intellectual interests, Porter was a friend of many younger contemporary artists, such as Alex Katz and Larry Rivers, and modern poets Frank O'Hara and James Schuyler.

He studied art history at Harvard University before moving to NY in 1928 and enrolling at the Art Students League in New York, where he studied with Thomas Hart Benton. Throughout his career, Fairfield Porter was both praised and criticized and for continuing his representational style in the midst of the Abstract Expressionist movement. His subjects were primarily landscapes, domestic interiors and portraits of family, friends and fellow artists, many of them affiliated with the New York School of writers. Many of his paintings were set in or around the family summer house on Great Spruce Head Island, Maine and the family home in Southampton, New York. Though he favored the watercolor medium early and late in his career, he made pencil and ink drawings and painted in oils throughout his life. His painterly vision, which encompassed a fascination with nature and the ability to reveal extra ordinariness in ordinary life, was heavily indebted to the French painters Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard.

The See by the Pemaquid Sea

The See by the Pemaquid Sea

below the Pemaquid Lighthouse, Bristol, Maine, painted plein air June 23, 2021, 12" x 9" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness and permanence, and graphite on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper framed.
$675

The magnificent sunny view of the Pemaquid rock ledges, Pemaquid Light behind me, with my plein air watercolor set up.

Wild Roses Under the Light of Pemaquid

Wild Roses Under
the Light of Pemaquid

in Bristol, Maine with the Plein Air Painters of Maine
and the New England Watercolor Society
painted plein air June 23, 2021
19" x 13" (w x h), Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam,
and Winsor & Newton watercolors, selected for light fastness
and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink
on 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100%
cotton extra white watercolor paper
framed, $700

The Art of Pemaquid Light - A Gallery

The Art of Pemaquid Light
By Eight Master Painters

Note: Only one of these eight lighthouse paintings includes figures, and the artist who painted that one, who's painted many lighthouses, only included figures in this painting of Pemaquid Light.

1
At Pemaquid
Gary Akers, American
Watercolor on paper, 7" × 10" (w x h)
Collection of Art in Embassies, Washington, D.C.
The artist's web site is HERE.

Source: Artist's website and US State Department, edited
Gary Akers paints in watercolor, dry brush and egg tempera. With his wife, Lynn, he lives in Union, Kentucky, in the winter, painting in his restored 19th century log cabin studio. In the summer he's in South Thomaston, Maine, where he paints the coast. In 1995, they purchased the Georges River Road School, also known as The Green Schoolhouse, located two miles down the St. George peninsula for his studio/gallery, where he's had a gallery show the first week in August since 1989. He's a member of both the American Watercolor Society and the Kentucky Watercolor Society. He's published two books of his paintings, Kentucky: Land of Beauty, 1999, and Memories of Maine, 2003.

2
Pemaquid Point Light
Cabot Lyford (1925-2016), American
Watercolor, 1960

Source: Wiki, edited
Cabot Lyford Lyford retired from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1986 after a 23-year teaching career. He and his wife then moved to their summer home in Pemaquid, Maine, on Pemaquid Harbor, which the couple had originally purchased for $7,000. He maintained art studios in both New Hampshire and New Harbor, Maine (Pemaquid Point).

He was an American sculptor known for his depictions of animals and the female figure, usually in black granite or wood. His sculptures are located in public parks, museums and schools throughout Maine and the US. Some of Lyford's well-known sculptures: The Whale on the waterfront in Prescott Park, Portsmouth, NH; My Mother the Wind, made using seven tons of Australian black granite, 1975, on Four Tree Island in Portsmouth New Hampshire facing the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. It's now a city landmark. According to his son, Matt Lyford, it's an anti-war sculpture which shows a mother and child escaping a battle." Life Force, a seven-ton dolphin from Deer Isle granite, outside the Regency Hotel in Portland, Maine. Remember, a black granite sculpture of a goose, stands in the peony garden at the headquarters of Maine Audubon in Falmouth, Maine. Lyford created Remember in the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, choosing black granite because the color recalled a seabird covered in oil. His sculptures are in the permanent collections of the Portland Museum of Art, the Colby College Museum of Art, the Farnsworth Art Museum, and the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine.

3
Pemaquid Light: Last Light
David Dewey (1946- ) American
Watercolor on paper, 29" x 27" (w x h), 2017
The artist's website is HERE.

Source: Wiki and Caldbeck Gallery, edited
David Dewey, born Phillipsburg, NJ, is an American landscape painter, known for his watercolor works. In 1968 he received his BFA from Philadelphia College of Art, and in 1974, his MFA from Washington State University. Jessica Nicoll, curator of the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art in Maine wrote: "His compositions create tension between the seen and unseen, between the illusion of reality and the fact of invention." He's the author of The Watercolor Book, Watson-Guptill, 1995.

David's paintings are in Bowdoin College Museum, Brunswick, Maine; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington; The Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Newport Art Museum, Newport, Rhode Island; The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, Addison Museum of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; and Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He's represented by the Caldbeck Gallery, Rockland, Maine. And I've taken his watercolor workshop twice; it must be good.

4
Government Property
(Pemaquid Point Lighthouse)
Andrew Newell Wyeth (1917-2009), American
Watercolor on off-white wove paper, 28 x 20" (w x h), 1954
Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Source: Wiki, edited
This was painted when Andrew was 37-years-old, six years after he painted Christina's World. Wyeth said that although he was thought of as a realist, he thought of himself as an abstractionist: "My people, my objects breathe in a different way: there's another core—an excitement that's definitely abstract. My God, when you really begin to peer into something, a simple object, and realize the profound meaning of that thing—if you have an emotion about it, there's no end." Wyeth primarily painted with egg tempera (which uses egg yolk as its medium) and watercolor. He avoided using oil paints. His father, N.C., used both. In 1977 Andrew Wyeth became the first American artist since John Singer Sargent to be elected to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. In Peanuts when Charles Schulz's dog house for Snoopy burned down, the Van Gogh was replaced with a Wyeth.

5
Pemaquid Light Maine Coast
Carroll Thayer Berry (1886-1978), American
Wood engraving on paper, 12" x 9" (w x h)
Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine

Source: Wiki, edited
Carroll Thayer Berry was an American artist who grew up in Maine, and whose work is often said to be emblematic of New England, especially the seacoast. In addition, he was one of the first U.S. artists to be assigned to camouflage in World War I.

He was born and raised in New Gloucester, Maine, where his father was a dairy farmer. In 1905, reluctant to follow a farming career, he enrolled at the University of Michigan, with the intention of becoming a marine engineer, and worked as a mechanical draftsman in Massachusetts.

In 1910, Berry joined an architectural firm in Portland, Oregon, and was sent to Panama to participate in the construction of the Panama Canal. After a year, however, he contracted malaria and was sent back to the United States to recuperate. While in the U.S., he took art classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Subsequently, when Berry was sent back to Panama as an inspector of construction, government officials were so impressed by his artistic abilities that they commissioned him to paint a series of large murals of the Canal's construction for the walls of the administrative building.

After World War I, Berry settled in Chicago, where he worked as a designer of installations and interiors for office buildings. He met his second wife, Janet Laura Scott, a successful illustrator, who later illustrated books about the Bobbsey Twins.

During the Depression, Berry and his wife, Laura, left city life and moved back to New England, where they bought a house in Wiscasset, Maine. Their home became a meeting place for craftsmen and artists of the region. Meanwhile, with World War II on the horizon, the Bath Iron Works commissioned Berry to document (through a series of paintings) their construction of fighting ships for the U.S. Navy. The Berrys sold their house in Wiscasset following World War II.

They bought a home in Rockport, Maine, as well as an old three-story brick building on Main Street, a short walk from their home. It served as Berry's studio for the rest of his life. It was there, equipped with a 19th-Century printing press, that Berry perfected his printmaking skills, in the process of which he made use of wood engraving, woodcut and linoleum block.

Berry's work is fall within three distinct periods: His early linocuts and oil paintings are experimental, and reflect the changing artistic trends of the early 1900s. In the era of the Depression, he turned to the more affordable medium of the woodblock, which eventually evolved into the iconic style of his wood engravings. Finally, around 1973, his interests shifted to Jay Hambidge's theory of dynamic symmetry, a system of proportion and natural design that promoted the use of geometry in artistic compositions.

6
Pemaquid Lighthouse
John Fulton Folinsbee (1892-1972), American
Oil, circa 1930-1939

Source: Wiki and US State Department, edited
John Fulton "Jack" Folinsbee (1892-1972) was a landscape, marine and portrait painter. He was a member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania. He is best known today for his impressionist scenes of New Hope and Lambertville, New Jersey, particularly the factories, quarries, and canals along the Delaware River.

He was born in Buffalo, New York, a middle son. At nine-years-old, he attended children's classes at the Art Students' League of Buffalo, but received his first formal training with the landscape painter Jonas Lie in 1907. He contracted polio at fourteen-years-old, which rendered his legs useless, weakened his right arm, and left him permanently wheelchair-bound. He attended The Gunnery, a boarding school in Washington, Connecticut, from 1907 to 1911. In 1914 he married Ruth Baldwin, who he'd met in Washington, Connecticut. The couple moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1916, and had two daughters, Elizabeth, Joan.

From his wheelchair, Folinsbee could manage plein air paintings as large as 30" x 24". Larger works were painted in his studio from drawings and oil sketches. To paint a large work, he'd lean a canvas against the studio wall and sit on the floor before it, his withered legs tucked under him.

In the mid-1930s, Folinsbee and his family spent their summers in Maine. In 1949 he bought a farmhouse at Murphy's Corner, between Bath and Wiscasset. Despite his intense wariness of the ocean, he embarked on a new aspect of his career, a marine painter. His Off Seguin (Ellingwood Rock) was awarded the 1952 Palmer Marine Prize by the National Academy of Design. With the prize money, he bought a 25-foot motorized Hampton dory (flat-bottomed open boat) that he named Sketch and equipped as a floating studio.

"One day I suddenly realized that the waves were a heavy sea duplicate what El Greco did in painting the heavy folds of his drapery. The quick turn of the waves is like that of his folds, in that the darkest dark is against the lightest light. The greatest contrast comes at the sharpest point where the wave turns up, where there is a dark, there is a light, it is that way in the folds of El Greco's garments. I've always been fascinated with the way he twists those big folds, exaggeration perhaps, but true in expressing the play of light on form." John Folinsbee

His work is in the permanent collections of Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the National Academy of Design, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A bronze bust of him by his friend Harry Rosin is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Folinsbee was diagnosed with cancer in the late 1960s, which further weakened his right arm and he stopped painting in 1971. He died a year later in New Hope at eighty-years-old.

7
Pemaquid Light
Antonio Pietro Martino (1902-1988), American
Oil on paper, 40" x 27" (w x h framed), circa 1960
Collection of Art in Embassies, Washington, D.C.

Source: Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the US State Department, edited:
This painting is part of the Art in Embassies program, U.S. Department of State.
Born in Philadelphia, Antonio P. Martino was the son of Italian immigrants and one of eight siblings, all of whom were artists. His father was a mason and stonecutter, and his mother a buttonhole maker. At 13-years-old, he attended classes with his brother Giovanni at the Graphic Sketch Club in South Philadelphia, now the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial. He then studied with at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, now the University of the Arts, and took weekend courses at both the Spring Garden Institute and the La France Institute.

By 23-years-old, Martino exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1941, he and his brothers founded Martino Commercial Art Studios, featuring a variety of fine art and promotional design services. All of the Martino brothers participated in the business, which had a staff of twenty artists. While living in the city, Martino and his brothers spent weekend mornings painting in Bucks County, landscapes of New Hope and the Delaware River that showed an impressionist influence. By 1971, he moved to California to paint seascapes and landscapes, residing there until his death in 1988.
The winner of many national awards, Martino was elected as an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1938 and a National Academician in 1942.

8
Pemaquid Light
Edward Hopper (1882–1967), American
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 20" x14" (w x h), 1929
While driving, the coast Hoppers stopped
in Pemaquid between June 27 and July 3, 1929
Portland Museum of Art, Portland Maine

Source: Highlights from the Portland Museum of Art, edited
Interestingly, Pemaquid Light is the only one of his lighthouse paintings to include figures, a notable exception, given Hopper's renown for capturing the sense of alienation and loneliness associated with modern life in America.

Hopper established his lifelong practice of working in watercolor outdoors during summer sojourns in New England and in oil in his New York studio during the winter months. Between 1926 and 1929, he spent several summers in Maine visiting Rockland, Portland, Cape Elizabeth, and Pemaquid, where this watercolor was made. (After 1929, he summered in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.) In Maine, his favorite subjects included some of the state's iconic structures: the lighthouses. Jo (Josephine Nivison Hopper) described her husband's lighthouse pictures as "self-portraits," suggesting an analogy between such structures and Hopper, who was also tall, solitary, and taciturn. Pemaquid Light depicts the nineteenth-century lighthouse and its ancillary buildings, located at Pemaquid Point on Muscongus Bay in midcoastal Maine. The Hoppers stopped at this site between June 27 and July 3, 1929, while wending their way up the coast from their base at Cape Elizabeth, south of Portland.

In Pemaquid Light the top of the lighthouse is cropped off and the structure is seen from the back, rather than from a more picturesque vantage point showing it perched high on a surf-battered headland. Always a deliberative artist, Hopper first laid down a light pencil sketch to establish the outlines of the buildings. Broad washes of transparent colors—mostly blues and purples—depict the expansive sky, band of sea, and long shadows on the structures, with green and brown hues for the grassy foreground. He used more controlled strokes for architectural details and the area along the curved face of the lighthouse where sunlight turns into shade. This passage provides a sense of movement in an otherwise static composition, as these expressive strokes suggest the flickering effects of light reflecting off waves. Hopper allowed the bright white of the paper to show through the watercolor, imbuing the scene with the brilliance of a sunny New England day.