Shore Birds II
Iprefer lakes.this is likely the result of 13 youthful summers on a lake in southwestern Maine.the glassy surface of a lake is both calming and inviting. It is simultaneously transparent yet defined.a crystalline pool whose bottom remains visible. Its borders, repeated in reflections which, while dissolved by any surface disturbance, quickly reappear. An early morning plunge into its depths is invigorating. Although immersed, you know where you are, and the safety of the shore is easily attainable.
The sea,on the other hand,is endless and changing. It can be turbulent and at times threatening, requiring a sterner resolve. The sea has no visible definition.you can easily be lost in its vortex. Its moods are affected by unseen forces. It is the great unknown.those seeking certainty and order are lost in its confrontation. To define it is beyond one’s grasp but for all of that, the sea stimulates a world of imagination, a promise of adventure.
For me, the romance of the sea came from words and images, from novels and movies rather than direct experience. Enthusiasm for the sea itself was, at best, sporadic. I experienced it through vehicles of popular culture. Early black and white television programs like “Victory at Sea” (1952-1953) with its compelling score by Richard Rodgers and documentation of the recently concluded World War were historically interesting but not as engaging as the illustrations provided by N.c.wyeth (1882-1945) for the action adventure stories such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Robinson Crusoe that were the extent of my childhood bookshelf. In these colorful pages, the sea appeared challenging yet remote in time and place. It was also contained within the edges of the page. Although my childhood home was within miles of the coast, we didn’t go to the beach. It was, in fact, also within miles of the home of N. C.wyeth, which I discovered much later.i was reminded of this recently when seeing the exhibition N.C. Wyeth: New Perspectives at the Brandywine River Museum of Art.the works in this exhibition provide an insightful survey of Wyeth’s ambition and achievement.the fact that his earliest and most familiar images were concocted in the mellow tilth of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania underscores the fertility of Wyeth’s imagination. His house and studio, thoughtfully restored, along with the studio of his son Andrew Wyeth, are now a part of the Brandywine Museum and can be visited. I had the opportunity to be present when Andrew Wyeth had his first look at his father’s
restored studio. He reminisced about his own early memories, an experience that is now a part of my own memory but lacking in detailed recollection of the conversation. Apologies to my fellow art historians!
The Wyeth exhibition introduces the discussion of American artists’ response to the sea, promised in my previous article which focused on the Hudson River School and its after-effects.there was certainly a long-standing tradition of maritime and marine painting in America which began in the 18th century. Ship portraits, harbor views, naval engagements during several wars, and an occasional stormy sea painting by both immigrant and native artists form an important part of the documentary record of American maritime activity but the romantic representation of the sea in its strength and awesome moods developed more fully in the later decades of the 19th century.
Wyeth’s own vision of the sea came in part from his familiarity with the work of Winslow Homer, a fact underscored by his naming of a house he acquired in Port Clyde, Maine “Eight Bells,” after a Homer painting.it appears thatwyeth’s embrace of the sea was further stimulated by summer residence in Maine. His coastal images were for him, as they had been for Homer, part of a journey from life as an illustrator to that of a creative artist. In 1920,Wyeth wrote to Sidney Chase, the artist who was then co-owner of the recently acquired Port Clyde house:“you and I are going to do some thundering big stuff there in the next few years” and went on to note “We must dig deep for the loftiness, the majesty, the sublimity of that wonderful shore.” Wyeth’s seasonal residency in Maine was, to some degree an effort to recapture his New England roots and an aspect of his desire to transcend his reputation as an illustrator and gain recognition as a creative artist. He self-consciously worked to enhance that perception and to be in touch with the transformative elements of contemporary art. In both subject and style, he aspired to be modern and more than a literary storyteller. Focusing on a rugged landscape rather than the stories of rugged and sometimes heroic characters seemed an ideal opportunity. Here he could also create an art that was authentically “American.” He could not, it seems, entirely refrain from orchestrating his compositions and allow art to overtake the artfulness that makes his illustrations so compelling.this is what, I believe, keeps his painting, no matter how richly colorful and proficient, from transcending his bravura technique, his passion for small detail and his controlling mind. He could not let the art itself become the story. His thwarted ambition stands in marked contrast to Winslow Homer (1836-1910) who, while also beginning as a graphic artist and illustrator, became so immersed in the vitality of his medium that his evolution into a painter was almost beyond his control but not his talent.
For Homer, it was also along the Atlantic coast that the seaside became a vehicle for his artistic transformation.a current exhibition at Gloucester’s Cape Ann Museum, Homer at the Beach: A Marine Painter’s Journey, 1869-1880, surveys the artist’s post-civil War exploration of coastal subjects. The show thus documents Homer’s transition from artist-illustrator to painter. The 51 paintings and watercolors in the exhibition belong to his initial exploration of marine subjects, a prelude to the Maine sea pictures, the crowning achievement of his later work.
While Wyeth’s illustrations were conceived in connection with newly developed color printing technologies, Homer’s were based in black and white imagery, primarily wood engraving. His transition to seeing and rendering in terms of color was greatly aided by his adoption of watercolor which began in Gloucester in 1873. Watercolor is a medium that is freely expressive but can also be unforgiving. Although various techniques exist for modifying passages, expressive spontaneity can easily be lost, and result in a labored product. Eye hand coordination is essential, and Homer’s mastery of the medium influenced his greater fluency in his later oil paintings. As an illustrator, he had developed compositional strategies that suggested momentary observation,effectively creating an eyewitness image, but his pictures were constructed of individual elements juxtaposed.as a result, his early images can appear stilted. It was only after he grasped the sense of enveloping atmosphere and the need to work the entire surface that his paintings coalesce. Physical atmosphere of the seaside was important in that process. This evolution becomes evident in the course of the Gloucester exhibition.
A significant aspect of the transition was the frequent diminution or disappearance of the figure in these works as the waterside itself gained in prominence.this was,to some degree, particular to these coastal images. All during the ‘70s, Homer continued to produce pastoral watercolors, many featuring farm youths at leisure.typically, only one or two figures are involved and with little personal interchange or narrative detail.they are frequently posed against hillside backgrounds or dense landscape settings rather than in open vistas so that a flattened space enhances the painterly essence,another link to the kind of modern painting strategies that Homer must have observed during his year in France in 1867 when work by Manet and Courbet was in the spotlight and the influence of Japanese woodblock prints, recently introduced to the west, was widespread.
Something during his last visit to Gloucester in 1880 moved Homer towards a dramatic level of abstraction. Gloucester was now the most active and productive fishing port in America, yet the life and struggles of fisherman are not described in these watercolors.this is surprising given Homer’s complete shift of strategies and working method when he moved to the northeast coast of England the following year. His work becomes much tighter featuring heroic figures engaged in an epic struggle of confrontation with the sea. He presents a sober image of unequal forces as fishermen and their wives face the unrelenting power of nature. Their appearance in the English works seems to suggest that the artist had now reached a dramatic turning point, a story that would be played out after his return to America and move to an isolated site on the coast of Maine.
It is important to note that during his quarter-of-a-century sojourn in Maine, Homer produced some of the sunniest and most embracing watercolors on winter trips to the Bahamas, Cuba, and Key West as well as vigorous watercolor renderings made during hunting and fishing trips to the Adirondacks and Canada.
Homer’s first episode of marine painting was an important step in a journey which took him from producing illustrations for Harper’s and other popular magazines early in his career to his full maturity as a masterful painter and a monumental presence in the story of American art. Although this column focusses on American art,there is an exhibition which includes a group of seascapes by an English artist. It is worth noting, in part because it is an element in another journey, one that aims at enhancing the vitality of an important American maritime museum. Watercolors by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) from thetate Britain are on view at Mystic Seaport Museum, the only North American venue of this show. It circulated previously in Europe and South America but in this installation, it has been enhanced by the addition of a group of pictures chosen to explore the life-long meaning of the sea to Turner. Turner’s paintings, especially some of his later, imaginative and atmospheric renderings have been presented previously as pre-figuring abstraction, a step in the process of releasing painting from its traditional representational bias. But for Turner, these paintings belong very much to their time and the romantic tradition. They also represent a life-long personal engagement with a subject that had immense meaning for the artist.
While Homer came to watercolor as a part of a transformative moment in his artistic evolution,turner had embraced watercolor from early on.that resulted in part from his early artistic enterprise based on extensive travels, first in England and then abroad. Far-flung sites were recorded on the spot and then reproduced in books and travel narratives. Ease of making these on-site studies, in pencil sketches and watercolor renderings, made the watercolor medium an essential part of his craft.according to the museum: These memories of journeys, emotions, and fragments of landscapes seen during his long stays abroad illustrate the development of Turner’s stylistic language focused on experimenting with the expressive potential of light and color.
There is a relationship betweenturner’s and Homer’s use of watercolor. It allowed both artists to connect with the thing seen and transform it into a meaningful work without analysis, demonstrating a similar eye-hand coordination. As described by Mystic, Turner devoted himself tirelessly to experimentation, particularly in watercolors, with a compositional and stylistic freedom and an innovative and surprising use of colors that led his peers to believe that Turner “appeared to paint with his eyes and nose as well as his hand.” Working with David Blayney Brown,
Tate’s Senior Curator of British Art 1790-1850, Mystic added the seascape section to the exhibition, underscoring its own commitment to telling the story of maritime activity to which it has been committed since its founding in 1929. Fulfilling its founding mission “to gather and preserve the rapidly disappearing artifacts of America’s seafaring past,” the Museum has grown to become a national center for research and education. It has refined its mission: to inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience and thus re-imagine the interchange between maritime heritage and broader contemporary culture.
A recreated maritime village, an extensive collection of historic vessels and maritime-related objects, an active ship-building facility and a host of special exhibitions are utilized in furthering that mission. During the last few years, the newly created position of Vice President for curatorial affairs has been the province of Nicholas Bell who inaugurated a series of exhibitions and other initiatives to enhance the Mystic experience and build audience for this major historic site. Other outdoor history sites across the country have experienced a decline in visitation and Mystic is responding to that aggressively. A new challenge to museums in general has been to make more of their collections accessible,expanding permanent installations and special exhibitions. Digging into the storage areas, which include over 500 historic craft, Nicholas’ team unearthed numerous objects that reflected the influence of streamlined design, paralleling developments in landbased transportation design and domestic appliances which began in the 1930s.the resulting exhibition Streamlined: From Hull to Home brought into focus the role that marine design played in the development of 20th century industrial design.and, moving forward, a recent grant from the Luce Foundation will allow further explorations of unseen material from the collections, in themed exhibits this year and next.
Many of the boats and engines in object storage will now also be visible in a new study storage display utilizing 38,000 square feet of warehouse space that will feature rotating displays open to visitors and utilized by school groups.
The focus on education also involves dynamic new installations, aimed not only at considering the impact of rising sea levels but also enabling direct engagement with real-time underwater research.a partnership with the Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration will result in the transformation of one of the historic building into a living laboratory with interactive images of ongoing investigation. Mystic’s role as a history museum has recently been amplified through its affiliation with the Global Curatorial Project on the history and legacy ofafrican slavery,an international consortium led by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture,and Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, that will collaborate on exhibitions and programming in the coming years. Nicholas has had the advantage of a newly constructed Thompson Exhibition Building to provide a platform for changing exhibitions that enlarge their audience and encourage return visits, the capstone being theturner show.focusing as it does on the watercolors rather than the traditional monographic exhibition with heavy emphasis on Turner’s more public oils, the exhibition offers a direct and intimate look at the artist’s private meditations on the sea which continued throughout his life.these seldom exhibited works thus provide an important insight into why John Ruskin (1819-1900), the widely influential art historian and critic, placedturner high in the pantheon of the world’s great historic and modern artists. All three exhibitions I have discussed include hefty catalogs that illustrate both exhibition objects and corollary material.the Turner exhibition catalog is significant in its novel approach. Bell organized a series of conversations among scholars, writers and artists, all described by him as “Turnerites.”these replace the typical curatorial essays.they follow an introduction by David Blaney Brown who chose the watercolors for the exhibition. And for those of you who will be rewarded by visiting the exhibition at Mystic, a stop in New Haven on the northward journey up route 95 will provide the bonus of a just-opened exhibition, Unto This Last:two Hundredyears of John Ruskin, at the Yale Center for British Art, celebrating Ruskin’s bicentennial and examining the ways by which he became one of the most influential writers on art and aesthetics and modern morality during the 19th century.