Impressionism and modernism in Maine

Magazine Antiques, July, 2004 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Like their counterparts who spent summers at the various art colonies in Connecticut, another group of artists discovered an impressive landscape on the tiny island of Monhegan, off the coast of southern Maine, during the summer of 1903. This idyllic spot had earlier provided inspiration for artists like William Trost Richards and Aaron Draper Shattuck. During the early twentieth century Monhegan Island represented a microcosm of the art scene elsewhere in the country, where proponents of the impressionist style coexisted with those who championed modernism. An exhibition that investigates these polarities as evidenced by those who painted on Monhegan is on view through September 30 at the Monhegan Museum, located near the lighthouse. The show is entitled Side by Side on Monhegan: The Henri Circle and American Impressionists and includes forty-one works painted by two dozen artists between 1903 and 1920.

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The year 1903 is pivotal because that summer Robert Henri visited his friend the Pennsylvania impressionist Edward Willis Redfield in Boothbay Harbor on the Maine coast. From there Henri took the ferry to Monhegan, where he spent four days making about two dozen oil sketches. He responded most to the foggy atmospheric conditions rather than the raking light that so appealed to the impressionists. He and Redfield returned to Monhegan in August, painting for about a month. Henri had a large group of students in New York City, and he urged them to travel to Maine. Among those who heeded his advice were Rockwell Kent and George Bellows. As Susan Danly observes in the catalogue to this exhibition, many of these artists painted similar scenes, yet the results are quite different. The impressionist painters elected to paint sweeping views in bright colors, while the followers of Henri depicted subjects at close range in a more muted palette. They also painted in the thickly applied brushstrokes associated with oil sketches.

Kent worked on Monhegan full time between 1905 and 1910, painting works that reduce the landscape to its essentials. Living there at the same time was Charles H. Ebert, who had formerly painted at the Cos Cob and Old Lyme, Connecticut, art colonies. Many of Ebert's artist friends such as William Chadwick, Wilson Henry Irvine, and Edward Francis Rook, whose company he had enjoyed in Connecticut, traveled to Monhegan where they painted sun-dappled canvases in the impressionist style. From the other artistic camp were artists such as Bellows who were influenced by the radical canvases they encountered at the famous Armory Show in New York City in 1913--a fact clearly revealed in the works they painted on Monhegan during ensuing summers.

Henri had purchased land on Monhegan the summer he first visited with the intention of establishing an art school. This never materialized, and he did not return until the summers of 1911 and 1918. In 1911 he was accompanied by Bellows, who had earlier been his student in New York. During his 1918 visit Henri worked in pastel, creating some of his most abstract works to date.

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The intriguing juxtapositions of the works of the impressionists and those working in a more experimental idiom give one the sense that this small Maine island must have been a fascinating place for an artist or admirer of art in the early years of the last century.

The catalogue of the exhibition may be obtained by telephoning the museum at 207-596-7003.