Maine Art: Bowdoin’s Monhegan Exhibit

Bowdoin’s Monhegan Wildlands exhibit celebrates the ecological resiliency of this small Maine island, using art to document the destruction and rebirth of its forests over time. This small (under one square mile) island with only 60 or so year-round residents has captivated some of the greatest American painters (including Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper, and three generations of the Wyeth family: N.C., Andrew, and Jamie, to name just a few). The exhibit showcases works of both well-known and lesser--known artists working in various media to trace the changes to the island’s forests over time.

Initial destruction of the island’s forests was largely man’s doing: 19th century settlers cleared most of the trees from the island’s perimeter to provide grazing areas for their sheep. Jamie Wyeth’s Islander, painted in 1975, shows a sheep looking out over the grass-covered, treeless hillside. (This painting was one of 27 Wyeth’s, spanning all three generations, donated to the Farnsworth Museum by matriarch Betsy Wyeth’s estate in 2001, after she passed away at 98.)   

Jamie Wyeth, Islander, oil on canvas, 1975

While the island perimeter was bare, the interior held a dense spruce forest, as shown in George Bellows’ dark and somewhat claustrophobic painting titled Cathedral Woods. (Which I, unfortunately, didn’t take a picture of.)

Among subsequent blights to the forest, another was also man-made: the importation of white-tailed deer in 1955. The deer devoured the seedlings of many trees, including aspen, birch, and maple. One species the deer weren’t interested in munching on was the invasive barberry, which soon took over the island. The deer also introduced the threat of Lyme disease, which had the potential to kill the island’s economic engine: tourism. In the 1990s, the islands decided it was high time to remove the deer herd (via hunting). The last deer was killed in March of 1999, and there have been only two documented cases of Lyme disease on the island since then.   

In addition to man-made devastation, the spruce forest was a victim of parasitic dwarf mistletoe infestation. The dwarf mistletoe with its distorted branches (sometimes referred to as witches’ brooms) eliminated huge stands of white spruce. Two pieces of art beautifully capture the mistletoe infestation. A woodcut by Barbara Petter Putnam illustrates the dense tangles of this lethal mistletoe.   

Barbara Petter Putnam, Monhegan-5, 2023, woodcut on kozo paper

And a compelling painting by Sylvia Alberts shows a majestic spruce tree silhouetted against the setting sun, with many of its branches distressed by mistletoe. The sun’s flare through the damaged tree provides a sign of hope.  

Sylvia Alberts, Sunset Tree, oil on canvas, 1997

Regrowth has been steady, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Monhegan Associates, a group of islanders that has been focused on conservation efforts, and preserving the island’s woodlands, since the mid-1950s. 

One of my favorite pieces in this exhibit is a Rockwell Kent gem, Sun, Manana, Monhegan, which shows the view from Kent’s Monhegan home of the sun setting across the water behind neighboring Manana island.   The painting documents the island’s slow reforestation through Kent's reworking of the painting over time. Originally painted in 1907 when there were few structures on the island, Kent reclaimed it from the owner over forty years later to add a row of new white spruce to the foreground. The spruce are literally glowing in celebration of their return to the island.

Rockwell Kent, Sun, Manana, Monhegan, oil on canvas, 1907/1950

There’s also a small reproduction of another Rockwell Kent, Young Spruces, Maine Coast, from 1955 that stopped me in my tracks and made me immediately homesick when I spotted it on the walls of the Hermitage way back in 2001. (This phenomenal museum stuffed with treasures is one that I will, sadly, most likely never visit again.) The Bowdoin exhibit wall label for the reproduction says Kent’s painting served as inspiration for this exhibition:

Exhibition co-curator Barry Logan first encountered it in 2015, when he and his research collaborators were documenting the decline and death of white spruce infected with parasitic dwarf mistletoe on Monhegan. Many of his study trees were approximately seventy years old and could have been the size of Kent's "young spruces" in the 1950s.

Although the odds are low that Kent's subjects were among the trees Logan included in his study, the connections across time and across ways of knowing-artistic and ecological— were humbling and inspiring. How had the Monhegan landscape changed with time? How have the painters and photographers who built the island's deep artistic traditions depicted and informed our understanding of this dynamic landscape? This exhibition represents a response to these questions.

Rockwell Kent, Young Spruces, Maine Coast, oil on canvas, 1955

Another personal favorite is Lynne Mapp Drexler’s Evergreen, the most realistic painting of hers I have seen. She applies her signature abstraction and geometric forms to this bulky tree. Drexler was transfixed by the wild beauty of Monhegan, first visiting the island in 1961, and relocating there permanently in 1983.

Lynne Mapp Drexler, Evergreen, oil on canvas, 1980

The brushstrokes in the foreground grasses are just breathtaking, as shown in the close-up below.

Detail, Lynne Mapp Drexler, Evergreen

There’s lots to this thoughtful exhibit beyond painting, including historical artifacts created by indigenous inhabitants such as bone harpoon points; historical documents; and detailed scientific research findings. If you can’t make it to Bowdoin before the exhibit ends  and you’re a Monhegan fan, you can see (most of) it next summer at the  Monhegan Museum of Art & History.

Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands, now through June 1, 2025 at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.  

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