Displaying items by tag: Maine

"Directors’ Cut: Selections from the Maine Art Museum Trail" presents art from Maine’s most-renowned museums—bringing the best art Maine has to offer together for the first time. The exhibition is on view at the Portland Museum of Art from May 21, 2015 through September 20, 2015.

Art and culture has defined the identity of Maine since artists began visiting Monhegan Island and trekking up Mount Katahdin before Maine even became a state.

The National Endowment for the Arts is awarding $894,300 in grants to nine Maine organizations for projects that focus on artistic creativity.

The majority of the funding is going to the Maine Arts Commission. The commission is getting $723,300. The rest of the money is going to a range of organizations that support projects in film, folk music, stage production, young artist workshops and other endeavors.

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine has acquired a late 19th-century camera originally owned by the American artist Winslow Homer. The dry plate camera was manufactured around 1880 and will enhance the museum’s existing collection of archival material related to Homer’s life and work.

The camera, which was donated to the museum by Neal Paulsen, a long-time resident of Maine, was designed for amateur photographers and renowned for its portability and ease of use. It was manufactured by Mawson & Swan, a photography business in England. Homer purchased the camera in 1882, during a two-year residence in Cullercoats, a small fishing village in northeast England. The date, “Aug 15, 1882,” and Homer’s initials are inscribed into the camera’s wooden plate holder.

Frank Goodyear, Co-Director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, said, “We are so pleased to receive this exciting gift, which complements our current holdings of Homer’s work and documentation perfectly. The camera highlights Homer’s varying artistic interests, and helps to illuminate a lesser-known side of one of America’s greatest painters.”

Homer is one of the foremost figures in American art and is well known for his seascapes and marine paintings. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Homer was an avid traveler and spent time living and working in New York City, Paris, and England, among other places. However, during his years in Prout’s Neck, Maine, Homer produced some of his most defining masterpieces. Homer moved to Maine in 1883 and spent most of his time working in his studio, a former carriage house, just 75  feet from the ocean. Homer remained in Prout’s Neck on his family’s estate until his death in 1910. Homer’s paintings from this period are defined by their crashing waves, rocky coasts, and his expert use of light.

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art has a special exhibition on Homer and photography scheduled for August 2015. The show will feature the recently acquired camera alongside photographs taken by Homer.

Maine philanthropists, Owen and Anna Wells, have donated their impressive photography collection to the Portland Museum of Art. The gift includes works by Robert Mapplethorpe, Ansel Adams, William Wegman and Berenice Abbott. 45 photographs from the Wells’ collection will go on view on December 21, 2013 as part of the exhibition American Vision: Photographs from the Collection of Owen and Anna Wells.

Owen Wells, Vice Chairman of the philanthropic Libra Foundation, and his wife, Anna, President of the Portland Museum’s Board of Trustees, began collecting photography in the 1990s. The couple initially gravitated towards American artists with ties to Maine, but their collection has grown to include some of the most well-known photographers of the 20th century. The Wells’ collection spans more than eight decades and includes landscapes, portraits and scenes of everyday life.   

American Vision: Photographs from the Collection of Owen and Anna Wells will be on view at the Portland Museum of Art through February 23, 2014. 

We now recognize Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) as one of America’s great artists of the nineteenth century. Further, many believe his work done in Maine includes some of his most important images, with Twilight in the Wilderness (Fig. 1), based on a sunset he had sketched at Bar Harbor, Maine, a few years earlier, ranking among the dozen greatest paintings in the history of American art.

On April 26, 2013 Christie’s announced the sale of Three Generations of Wyeth: The Collection of Eric and Cynthia Sambol, which will take place on May 23, 2013 as part of its American Art auction in New York. Comprised of thirteen works – one by N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), six by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), and six by Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946) – it is one of the largest collections of Wyeths Christie’s has ever sold.

Eric Sambol, a 53-year-old New Jersey businessman, became captivated by the work of Andrew Wyeth after a school trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1976 to see the exhibition Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth: Kuerners and Olsons. Years later in 2000, after building an impressive collection of Hudson River School and maritime paintings, Sambol acquired his first Andrew Wyeth painting, Flat Boat. With the help of his wife Cynthia, a landscape designer, the couple’s collection grew to include works by Andrew’s father, N.C. Wyeth, and Andrew’s son, Jamie Wyeth.

Highlights from the collection include Andrew Wyeth’s Rocky Hill, an emotionally wrought watercolor of his dog Nell, which is expected to garner between $1.8 million and $2.4 million; Jamie Wyeth’s Lighthouse Dandelions, which draws on the family’s close connection to Maine and is expected to sell for $250,000-$350,000; and N.C. Wyeth’s Norry Seavey Hauling Traps Off Blubber Island, which was painted as a gift to Roger Scaife, a friend of the artist and editor at Houghton Mifflin and is expected to bring $300,000 to $500,000.    

On April 26, 2013 an exhibition featuring 30 paintings by N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945) will open at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, ME; the works are being loaned by the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA

Every Picture Tells a Story: N.C. Wyeth Illustrations from the Brandywine River Museum spans four decades and includes Wyeth’s early western paintings, paintings that were used as illustrations for Robert Louis Stevenson books, and later works that boast a more experimental style. Wyeth, an American artist and prolific illustrator, divided his time between Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley and coastal Maine. The Farnsworth often highlights Wyeth’s Maine-related works.

Every Picture Tells a Story will be on view through December 29, 2013.

New York’s American Folk Art Museum has mounted an exhibition devoted to the notable Boston-based itinerant folk portraitist William Matthew Prior (1806-1873). Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed was organized by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York and features over 40 oil paintings spanning Prior’s career from 1824 to 1856.

Prior, who moved from Maine to Boston in 1840, is best known for his paintings of working-class Americans, a demographic that had previously been overlooked by artists. Prior developed a simple, straightforward style to meet the tastes and means of his humble clientele, which often included families and children. However, Prior went on to depict a diverse range of sitters that included himself, a famous preacher, and a number of African Americans. Prior often shifted his style from modest to elaborate based on his subject.  

Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed, which is the first comprehensive museum retrospective to focus on Prior, will be on view through May 26, 2013.

If you have ever driven to Maine, you will have been greeted by a sign: “Welcome to Maine, The Way Life Should Be” as you cross state lines. Having lived in the Pine Tree State for nearly a decade, the owner of this collection couldn’t agree more. “My parents used to take my siblings and me to Maine when we were young and I have many fond memories of time spent in and around Phippsburg and Bath,” he recalls. “As an adult, I wanted to be near the ocean so my wife and I bought a place on Nantucket—but it just got too congested with cars and people.” He adds, “So we decided to look for a less populated coastal property. We went to Essex, Connecticut, and drove north. Every time we could turn right, we did, so that we hugged the coast. We wanted to acquire some acreage for privacy and didn’t find a large undeveloped parcel until we got to Maine.” A number of years ago he decided to make the state his permanent home, and has never regretted it.

Winslow Homer (1836–1910), one of the foremost figures in American art, is well known for his sea scenes and marine paintings. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Homer was an avid traveler and spent time living and working in New York City, Paris, and England, among other places. However, during his years in Prout’s Neck, Maine, Homer produced some of his most defining masterpieces.

Homer moved to Maine in 1883 and spent most of his time working in his studio, a former carriage house, just 75 feet from the ocean. Homer remained in Prout’s Neck on his family’s property until his death in 1910. Homer’s paintings from this period are defined by their crashing waves, rocky coasts, and his expert use of light; they are also the subjects of two current exhibitions.

The Portland Museum of Art’s show, Weatherbeaten: Winslow Homer and Maine, focuses on Homer’s connection with his Prout’s Neck studio, which the museum now owns. The paintings on display feature the ocean views Homer saw from his home as well as the burly fishermen and statuesque women he often focused on. The exhibition’s range of paintings illustrates Homer’s transition from more populated works to stripped-down paintings that include just sea and land; Homer’s personal life followed a similar evolution.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is also hosting an exhibition of Homer’s work titled, Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and ‘The Life Line.’ The show is based around the museum’s own painting and Homer’s greatest success, The Life Line (1884), which features a woman being saved from the tumultuous sea by an anonymous hero. Shipwreck! Focuses on Homer’s changing relationship with the sea and includes tranquil marine paintings as well as bleaker scenes.

Weatherbeaten will be on view at the Portland Museum of art through December 30. Shipwreck! ends up its run at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on January 1, 2013.