To riff off an previous adage, no artist is an island. Artists are impacted by their instant environment, of system, but also by so a great deal far more.

Even though Monhegan Island’s seclusion and natural attractiveness has captivated artists given that the late 19th century – perhaps most famously George Bellows, Robert Henri, Rockwell Kent and the Wyeths – numerous of those who painted in this article also traveled thoroughly in Europe, generally France, the place they soaked up influences of the vibrant art movements sweeping the continent. They examined their craft at different faculties less than the tutelage of other well known artists, and they usually bounced seasonally from one particular to a further of the quite a few artwork colonies that proliferated right after the Civil War.

These colonies made available them a possibility to socialize and paint with other artists and to acquire workshops with artists they admired, all main to a rich cross-pollination of strategies and the further unfoldment of their private designs. The specific inventive exchange between Monhegan Island and a different flourishing artwork colony 100 miles away, Cape Ann in Massachusetts, is the matter of the Monhegan Museum of Art and History’s “Cape Ann and Monhegan Island Vistas: Contrasted New England Art Colonies” (by way of Sept. 30).

Not surprisingly, the exhibition, curated by James F. O’Gorman, is primarily seascapes and harbor scenes. That could have been monotonous. Fortunately, the excellent assortment of kinds exhibited within this style provide to chronicle a multiplicity of ways that have been informed by the terrific creative developments taking place during the show’s approximately 100-calendar year timespan.

It all starts with a homecoming of sorts: a lushly rendered childhood portrait of Jacqueline “Jackie” Hudson by George Bellows, which a museum trustee purchased final 12 months and bequeathed to the museum in honor of the institution’s director from 1984 to 2019, Edward Deci. Jackie Hudson helped observed the Monhegan Museum in 1968, and Deci, a lifelong collector of Monhegan artists, definitely transformed it into what it is nowadays, so Jackie’s return to the island holds specific importance.

Jackie’s father, Eric Hudson – a painter, lithographer and photographer – experienced metaphorically opened the inventive floodgates to the island in the late 1800s when he chanced upon it through a sailing excursion with two other artists. Impressed with the visual likely offered by the island’s dramatic cliffs and pine forests, he created a home around the harbor, where by he painted during the summer months months right until his death in 1932. As word-of-mouth distribute, this 4.5-sq.-mile mound of igneous gabbro rock flooded with other painters and sculptors.

Jackie was a single of Eric’s two daughters (the other was Julie). She grew to become an artist herself and, like all those represented in the exhibit, also lived or painted in Cape Ann. The latter had turn out to be a thriving art colony in the late 1860s. The distinction involving destinations is apparent in the pairing of Jackie’s “Storm in Monhegan Harbor” and “Church Good, Principal St., Rockport.”

The former is a tempestuous, risk-stuffed scene that conveys the remoteness and isolation of Monhegan, as perfectly as its susceptibility to the factors. The latter captures the livelier social local community existence of this peninsular Cape Ann fishing village. While also removed from urban cacophony, it is obvious from the festive collecting right here that we’re on the mainland, with Boston beneath an hour absent. Both equally are painted in an impressionistic design.

Walter Farndon, “The Docks, Gloucester, Massachusetts,” oil on board. Personal selection. Graphic courtesy of Vose Galleries, Boston, MA

One particular of a number of revelations in the show is the juxtaposition of two works by Walter Farndon. Born in England, he commenced portray in the 1890s, when publish-impressionism dominated the Parisian artwork scene. It’s clear he picked up the enjoy of thick, pure software of pigment write-up-impressionists and their precursors, the impressionists, shared. But he also formulated an energetic brushwork characteristic of the write-up-impressionists, particularly Cézanne. Farndon’s strokes – small, fat and closely impastoed (some evidently used with a palette knife and then scraped) – animate both of those “Road to Fish Seaside, Monhegan” from the 1930s and “The Docks, Gloucester, Massachusetts” (not dated).

What is riveting about the pairing is the way Farndon could differ the thickness of the paint, the brushstrokes on their own and the palette to reach distinctive results. The pastel hues, shortness of strokes and crusty impasto of “Monhegan” express the rusticity of the buildings and locale, as perfectly as the exposure of the island, which sits in the middle of the ocean, to the sunshine. The a lot more saturated palette, parts of far more evenly applied paint and strokes that show up thinner and longer telegraph the bustle of the port, it is stabilizing connection to the mainland, the more refined architecture (a big brick constructing) and the liquid reflectivity of the water.

James E. Fitzgerald, “At the Graveyard,” oil on canvas. James Ftizgerald Legacy, gift of Anne Hubert. Photo courtesy of Monhegan Museum of Art & Heritage

It is also exciting to see how artists altered more than time. In James E. Fitzgerald’s “Back Seashore Willows, Rockport, Mass.,” circa 1925, the artist was nonetheless committed to pretty impressionist scenes. But 40 a long time on, in “At the Graveyard” (1960s), that has been supplanted by superior expressionistic drama. The composition is triangular in a baroque variety of way, the superior to elicit the emotion of powerful upward movement related to the monumental Théodore Géricault masterpiece “Raft of the Medusa.” Fitzergald’s brush is daring, his shade saturated, and the way he raked paint diagonally across the canvas would make us sense the pelting energy of the downpour.

Maurice Freedman’s type, too, adjusted by leaps and bounds. “Rockport Quarry Dock” of 1933 is a sensible but free representation of his topic and displays the brooding colour palette of the period. But by 1968, the date of “Cathedral to the Sea,” Freedman had arrived at back to and thoroughly embraced the analytic cubist design he experienced been uncovered to by his teacher in Paris, André Lhote, in the 1920s, and later by Max Beckmann’s fractured planes and black outlines in the 1930s. Analytic cubism’s disassembled types and many views are as considerably removed from “Quarry” as could be, and the sky is reduced to a several uncomplicated bands of purple, blue and green.

Maurice Freedman, “Rockport Quarry Dock,” 1933, oil on canvas. Selection of Alan Freedman. Picture courtesy of Greenhut Galleries, Portland, ME

Other painters remained far more regular more than time. The two of Paul Strisik’s paintings, “Evening Tide, Very good Harbor Beach front, Gloucester” (1974) and “Monhegan Pier” (1959) – two of the most gorgeous operates in the exhibit – show the identical dexterity in conveying warm evening gentle. The later portray may at very first surface a lot more refined since of the realistically rendered rocks in the foreground. But as the eye travels toward the seaside and horizon, his unfastened hand and washes of shade are of a piece with the previously picture’s impressionism.

There’s a lot more than sufficient right here to justify the 55-minute ferry journey from Port Clyde. Margaret Jordan Patterson’s colored woodcuts have an practically Japanese sensibility. Leon Kroll shows equivalent facility with seascape (“Sunlit Sea,” 1913) and landscape (“Eden Highway, Rockport,” 1961). Normally, of class, “Island Vistas” also presents a good excuse to take a look at gorgeous Monhegan Island – as if any excuse was wanted.

Jorge S. Arango has published about artwork, design and style and architecture for over 35 years. He life in Portland. He can be achieved at: [email protected] 

Paul Strisik, “Monhegan Pier,” 1959, oil on canvas. Gift of Nancy Strisik. Picture courtesy of Monhegan Museum of Art & Background


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By Harmony