Ogunquit Museum: My faves
Rockwell Kent
It’s always a great day when I get to stand in front of a Rockwell Kent and soak in the magical light. I’m not sure why I hadn’t made it to the Ogunquit Museum of American Art before, but I was so happy I finally visited and was rewarded with seeing a beautiful Kent sunrise painting of Resurrection Bay in Alaska. Kent escaped New York with his eight-year-old sun during a difficult time in his marriage, and the two spent seven winter months on remote Fox Island, in Resurrection Bay. It was an arduous journey there: after traveling by steamship from Seattle to Seward, they set off in an 18-foot dory loaded with 100 pounds of supplies for Fox Island, some 12 miles off the coast. During the long winter, they rowed back and forth to Seward a handful of times in the same dory.
Kent had sent his canvases via the US postal service, and they had an even longer trip. For the first few months on the island, Kent was forced to do a lot of pen and ink sketching while he waited for his canvases to arrive. These sketches served as source material for later paintings, and constituted the bulk of an art book he published about his time in Alaska. The isolation, beauty, and long days dedicated to art in Alaska helped restore both Kent’s mental health and his art career.
“There are times in life when nothing happens. But in quietness the soul expands.”
Rockwell Kent, Alaskan Sunrise, 1919
Marsden Hartley
The walls of the room that Alaskan Sunrise is in are painted a shade of pink that seems designed to bring out the pinks in this painting. Alaskan Sunrise is hung next to a muted but fabulous winter painting of Mt. Katahdin by Marsden Hartley. This piece is dominated by multiple shades of gray, with silvery highlights. Mt. Katahdin is the iconic motif in Hartley’s work and was central to his crusade to establish himself as the “painter of Maine”. I find his autumn paintings the most visually arresting of his Katahdin portraits, especially the one in the Met, Mt. Katahdin, Autumn, No. 2. While this winter scene isn’t the most compelling of his Katahdin portraits by any means, it is an important part of his oeuvre.
Marsden Hartley, Mt. Katahdin, Winter, 1939-40
And while this painting seems somewhat flat and monotonal in the photo above, if you look at the detail shot below there are some very subtle, but interesting, variations in the shade and thickness of the paint. There’s a lot for the eye to look at in this quiet piece.
Detail, Marsden Hartley, Mt. Katahdin, Winter, 1939-40
Russell Cheney
On the same wall is another winter scene by an artist I was unfamiliar with: Russell Cheney, described by several critics as a “Yankee modernist”. Born into a very wealthy Connecticut family, Cheney grew up in a 45-room mansion overlooking the family’s silk factories – factories so dominant that they employed a quarter of the people in his hometown. After attending Yale (where he was in the secret society Skull and Bones) he decided to become an artist, attending the Art Students League in New York and studying under William Merritt Chase. He relied on his family’s fortune for support, living and painting in the mansion he was raised in until he was 48. His summers were spent painting at the family’s home in York Harbor, where Cheney had a summer studio. While in York, Cheney studied with Charles Woodbury, who led the rise of Ogunquit as a summer arts colony. Woodbury encouraged Cheney to adopt a looser painting style and to paint en plein air, no matter the weather. (This river painting was most likely painted outdoors, although this isn’t stated on the label.)
Cheney’s Piscataqua River, Winter Trees painting celebrates the structural beauty of bare limbs in winter, with the twisted branches dominating this tranquil scene. As with the Marsden Hartley, there is a lot of wonderful, subtle tonal variation in the blue greys of the frozen river.
Russell Cheney, Piscataqua River, Winter Trees, 1931
All three fabulous winter paintings are a great reminder, as another long, cold Maine winter approaches, that there is beauty to be found in every season in Maine. (You just won’t find me outside painting it!)
An Unusual Still Life
Before leaving this room, I came across a totally unexpected painting. Can you guess who painted this still life?
Still Life with Eel, ca. 1917
I’m sharing the description of this work by Devon Zimmerman, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ogunquit Museum, that I found on facebook:
“This painting by Marsden Hartley is truly a favorite of mine from the collection. Still Life with Eel is funky, magical, and utterly enigmatic...though there are plenty of coded signs that point to its meaning.
Hartley spent the winter of 1916–17 in Bermuda with Charles Demuth. Still Life with Eel was painted during this trip. The deep blues, bright reds, and wild citrine-yellow and acid greens exude the warmth of the tropical setting of the Caribbean.
The painting is filled with sensual undertones. The white camellia flower resting on blue and white ribbons hints at love. The phallic eel and elongated orange spadix of the red anthurium—also known as a "painter's palette—infuse the painting with a further erotic charge.
It is just so fascinating and too good.”
Lynne Mapp Drexler
I’m not sure why this absolutely fabulous Lynne Mapp Drexler painting isn’t in the current exhibit of her work at the Farnsworth, but it was a delight to see it here. (See my earlier blog, linked below, for more thoughts on Drexler and the Farnsworth show.) Here are some comments on her work and this piece from the museum label. “Her idiosyncratic style, merging post-Impressionistic pointillist mark making with an Expressionist dynamism, has only recently received the attention it deserves. The symphonic crescendo of hovering square, rectangular, and circular units of vibrating colors in Grass Pond capture Drexler's lifelong relationship to nature.”
Lynne Mapp Drexler, Grass Pond, 1964
Here’s a detail shot to give you a better sense of the vibrating colors, patterns and texture of Lynne Mapp Drexler’s Grass Pond painting.
Detail, Lynne Mapp Drexler, Grass Pond, 1964.
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So those are my favorite paintings from my first, but definitely not last, visit to this coastal Maine museum. The Ogunquit Museum is seasonal, and there’s a little less than a month left until it closes for the 2024 season on November 17th. It’s a great way to spend a crisp fall weekend, both indoors and wandering around the outdoor sculpture garden, which has views of Perkins Cove and the Gulf of Maine that can’t be beat.
A view of Perkins Cove from the Ogunquit Museum of American Art’s sculpture park
P.S. If you’re a Rockwell Kent fan like me, there’s a wonderful collection of more than 30 of his paintings tucked away in the library at SUNY Plattsburgh. (This is the largest collection of his paintings anywhere.) It includes many of his works painted nearby at Asgaard Farm in the Adirondacks near Ausable Forks, NY, where he spent the latter decades of his life. It looks like the collection is currently not on display, so be sure to check with them before making the trek!
See prior art reviews here:
https://www.marciacrumleyart.com/blog/maine-art-review-lynne-drexler-at-the-farnsworth
