Art-to-Art Palette Journal

ME: Portland

“Twilight, A Sketch”, oil on canvas, 8 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches, 1858, Frederic Edwin Church, Collection of Olana, NYSOPRHP.

WHERE: Portland Museum of Art.

WHEN: Opens Saturday, June 30 through September 30, 2012.

TITLE: Maine Sublime: Frederic Edwin Church’s Landscapes of Mount Desert and Mount Katahdin

BRIEF ABOUT: From the permanent collection at Olana, the home that artist Church built for himself in upstate New York, the exhibition includes 23 of his small oil and pencil sketches that feature Maine’s two most majestic natural landmarks and many will be on public view for the first time.

     This landscape painter first traveled to Maine in 1850 was inspired by the portfolio of drawings his teacher Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, and by Andreas Achenbach’s dramatic sea painting, “Clearing Up–Coast of Sicily” exhibited in 1849 in New York City. Church spent six weeks on Mount Desert exploring the coast, its rocky islands and peaceful harbors, where he sketched the scenery he described as “magnificent both land and seaward.”  In 1852 he trekked inland focusing on the area of Mount Katahdin and over the next decades, he continued to capture Maine’s sensational sunsets, robust crashing waves, impressive peaks and an abundance of wilderness.

“Sunset, Bar Harbor” oil on paper mounted on canvas, 10 1/8 x 17 1/4 inches, circa 1854, Frederic Edwin Church, Collection of Olana, NYSOPRHP.

MORE DETAILS: Call 207.775.6148 or see www.portlandmuseum.org.

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