Coastal canvas

By BETTY LOWRY

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 8, 2001

Three generations of Wyeths have found inspiration in the charm of Maine's middle coast, where cornfield and farmhouse meet the sea.

ROCKLAND, Maine -- Christina's World, one of the most-recognized images in 20th century American art, came home to visit last fall after 49 years in Manhattan. She didn't stay long enough, everyone says, but for a few months in Rockland's Farnsworth Art Museum, it was as if she never left.

New York's Museum of Modern Art's temporary loss was Maine's regain.

In nearby Cushing, the stubble of cornfield, the ever-changing cloud pattern of the coastal sky and the old farmhouse are pretty much as they were in 1948, when summer resident Andrew Wyeth put sky and his neighbor Christina Olson together in that masterpiece.

He had already painted the house dozens of times and knew Christina, crippled by polio, and her brother, Alvaro, as longtime friends of his wife, Betsy James Wyeth. Now it all came together in tempera.

"It was Maine," Wyeth said later.

[Photo: Betty Lowry] A dockside still life: “found art” is everywhere in the region.

The mid coast of Maine is the acknowledged country of the Wyeths, America's great three-generation family of painters: Newell Convers, better known as N.C. (1881-1945); Andrew (born in 1917); and Jamie (born in 1946).

Andrew still has a summer home at Bradford Point and still uses his father's boathouse studio at Port Clyde on the St. George River.

Jamie prefers an old lighthouse station on his private Southern Island, at the entrance to Tenants Harbor. A hike around Monhegan Island is like entering a Wyeth world.

The Wyeths have always been more than summer residents, though they also live in Chadds Ford, Pa., in the winter.

Mainers tend to dismiss winter residences as irrelevant. Maine, they say, is where the heart is. Haven't Wyeths been coming here since 1920? Haven't they chosen Rockford's Farnsworth Art Museum as the permanent home of the Wyeth Maine works and archives?

When Farnsworth (considered one of the nation's best small art museums) was founded half a century ago thanks to the bequest of Lucy Copeland Farnsworth, seven Wyeth watercolors were among the trustees' first purchases. Andrew Wyeth's first museum show was hung there in 1951; Jamie Wyeth's first was in 1969.

N.C. Wyeth may be famous for his dramatic illustrations of children's classics, but he spent the last 25 years of his life doing landscapes of the Maine coast. The works of Andrew and Jamie provide closer looks at Maine -- from dogged fishermen to Maine coon barn cats -- all living and working, unaware they are being captured for posterity.

The MBNA Center for the Wyeth Family in Maine, housed in the onetime Rockland Methodist Church, is where it all comes together. Here on the campus of the Farnsworth Art Museum, the Wyeth Study Center opened in 1998; the Jamie Morehouse Wing opened in June.

They hold more than 4,500 works by the Wyeths, including the private collection of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth.

The new Wyeth additions have doubled the size of the museum complex, but the Farnsworth collection of American art also consists of more than 8,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs and works on paper by other artists.

Perhaps one of the most famous homes in America, the Olson House is depicted in Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World.

The museum administers both the Victorian house museum adjacent to the art museum and the Olson House of Christina's World, a gift of John Sculley, former Apple Computer CEO, and his wife, Lee Adams Sculley. The house is open to the public from Memorial Day to mid October.

In Rockland, they may be as lyrical about the Wyeths as Mainers get, but they also point to other artists who worked there: for example, sculptor Louise Nevelson (1900-1988) and painters John Marin (1870-1953), Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865) and Winslow Homer (1836-1910).

Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1958) was born in Rockland and grew up in nearby Camden. Robert Lowell (1917-1977) wrote Skunk Hour about Nautilus Island. For writer Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), this was the Country of the Pointed Firs, and for naturalist Rachel Carson (1907-1964), The Edge of the Sea.

Residents include potters and printmakers, toymakers and quilters. Gallery/shops offer bowls made of maple or cherry burls, silver jewelry with sea-washed glass stones and designer gold rings.

Arts and crafts shows are regular events in Maine coastal communities on summer weekends. Bed and breakfast guesthouses have original art hung on their walls, nearly all of it for sale. Rockland (population 8,000) has about 20 art galleries.

Then there is found art. The juxtaposition of a yellow chair against a weathered shack; the trio of buoys hung casually from a tree in someone's yard; the stack of lobster pots on the pier; a sky full of descending gulls. They say the finest sight in Maine is Monday morning on the Rockland breakwater, when the tourist-loaded tall ships go out by the lighthouse at Owls Head.

Or you can just pick a back road -- any road -- and drive until you see an old farmhouse on a hill, maybe with a view of the sea.

Betty Lowry is a freelance writer who lives in Wayland, Mass.

If you go

GETTING THERE: Rockland is 189 miles from Boston, 375 from New York City. From Interstate 95, swing off to U.S. 1 at Brunswick and go north to Rockland. You can also fly via Boston on USAirways Express (Colgan Air) to Rockland (Owls Head) and rent a car.

ACTIVITIES: The Farnsworth Art Museum is open all year. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and until 7 p.m. Wednesdays from May 30 through Dec. 31. From Jan. 1 through May 30, it is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m.

Admission to the Farnsworth complex is $9 for adults, $8 for those 65 and older, $5 for students. Admission to the Olson House is $4 for everyone 18 and older.

A "Maine Art Museum Trail" has been laid out to include, in addition to the Farnsworth, the museums of Bates College, Lewiston; University of Maine, Orono; Bowdoin College, Brunswick; Colby College, Waterville; and the city art museums in Portland and Ogunquit. The trail includes more than 53,000 works, ranging from ancient to modern.

Workshops with classes for children and adults, as well as art schools with summer and full academic year programs, are everywhere. So are bookstores holding frequent readings and book signings. Rockport's Maine Coast Art Workshops schedule classes from mid-June through September. Its Maine Photographic Workshops are said to attract more professionals than amateurs.

STAYING THERE: Beech Street Guest House, 41 Beech St., Rockland, (207) 596-7280, was once the parsonage of the Methodist church. $65 to 95 a night, with full breakfast.

LimeRock Inn, 96 Limerock St., toll-free 1-800-546-3762. $100 to 185, with breakfast.

Berry Manor Inn, 81 Talbot Ave., toll-free 1-800-774-5692. $95 to 195.

Waterman House, 33 Grove St., (207) 596-0093, e-mail waterman@gwi.net. $65 to 95, with breakfast.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact the Farnsworth Art Museum & Wyeth Center, (207) 596-6457; the Web sites are www.farnsworthmuseum.org and www.wyethcenter.com.

Contact the Maine Art Museum Trail toll-free at 1-800-782-6497; Web site, www.maineartmuseums.org.

Call the Rockland-Thomaston Chamber of Commerce toll-free at 1-800-562-2529; Web site, www.midcoast.com/rtacc.

The Maine Information Hotline is toll-free 1-888-624-6345; Web site, www.visitmaine.com.

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