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Lot Essay
Executed 1975.
Set some ten miles off mid-coast Maine, Monhegan Island has drawn some of the most accomplished artists throughout the world, fascinated by the dramatic yet tranquil landscape. Its timeless atmosphere has inspired some of the most brilliant paintings in American art history by renowned artists such as Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, and Edward Hopper. Jamie Wyeth in particular has created some of his most stunning works from his extended stays on the island, drawing upon the people, architecture and general lifestyle of an inimitable island community.
In Summer House, Winter House, two facades look towards each other as if engaged in a dialogue. Wyeth comments "those two houses were built by Rockwell Kent and they're wonderful houses. Kent has had such an influence on my life, in all sorts of ways, but the houses particularly fascinated me because they are mirror images of themselves. Everything is reversed...I think they're wonderful--the architectural whimsy. I've done a number of paintings of them. My house paintings, on Monhegan in particular, really are portraits. The houses have taken on a whole kind of life out there." (as quoted in C. Crosman, Jamie Wyeth: Islands, Rockland, Maine, 1993, p. 12)
The two homes depicted in Summer House, Winter House, constructed by Charles and Edwin Janney with the assistance of Kent in 1907, have continued to intrigue Wyeth and appear in some of his most prominent works, including Summer People's (Anonymous) and Twin Houses (Collection of United Missouri Bank of Kansas City). Their historical place and physical setting distinguish the houses on the island. Ruth Faller writes "...as you come into the north end of the harbor, but before you reach the wharf, there are twin houses up on the rocks..." (Monhegan- Her Houses, Her People, Melrose, Massachsuetts, 1995) Looking out onto the ocean between the facing structures an open expanse of sea and sky provide an even more overwhelming sense of surrounding space to the isolated island.
Wyeth has continued to build upon the artistic tradition set forth by his realist painter predecessors while painting in an age dominated by abstraction. "His works represent a wonderful extension of the Romantic tradition into the twentieth century. His landscape subjects, his painterly light-filled style, and his emotional involvement with nature, are all indications of his Romantic proclivity. But the artist has added to this nineteenth-century tradition an artistic interpretation, solidly grounded in his own technocratic times." (P. Beecher, in Three Generations of Wyeths, Elmira, New York, 1986, p. 23) Wyeth says of his process that "...in my approach, I don't abstract the forms. My passion is to go as deep within the visual structure of an object or person as one possibly can. It just so happens in the final work I don't abstract it." (as quoted in Jamie Wyeth: Islands, p. 5)
Wyeth comments that "the danger with Maine is that it is so anecdotal and emblematic in terms of pot buoys, pretty houses, pretty lobster traps--'quaint' things. Maine is not that way, Maine has a lot of edge, a lot of angst. In particular, islands..." Summer House, Winter House contains all of this stirring and deeply embedded tension, composed in a stunningly beautiful landscape.
This painting is included in the database of the artist's work being compiled by the Wyeth Center at the William A. Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine.
Set some ten miles off mid-coast Maine, Monhegan Island has drawn some of the most accomplished artists throughout the world, fascinated by the dramatic yet tranquil landscape. Its timeless atmosphere has inspired some of the most brilliant paintings in American art history by renowned artists such as Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, and Edward Hopper. Jamie Wyeth in particular has created some of his most stunning works from his extended stays on the island, drawing upon the people, architecture and general lifestyle of an inimitable island community.
In Summer House, Winter House, two facades look towards each other as if engaged in a dialogue. Wyeth comments "those two houses were built by Rockwell Kent and they're wonderful houses. Kent has had such an influence on my life, in all sorts of ways, but the houses particularly fascinated me because they are mirror images of themselves. Everything is reversed...I think they're wonderful--the architectural whimsy. I've done a number of paintings of them. My house paintings, on Monhegan in particular, really are portraits. The houses have taken on a whole kind of life out there." (as quoted in C. Crosman, Jamie Wyeth: Islands, Rockland, Maine, 1993, p. 12)
The two homes depicted in Summer House, Winter House, constructed by Charles and Edwin Janney with the assistance of Kent in 1907, have continued to intrigue Wyeth and appear in some of his most prominent works, including Summer People's (Anonymous) and Twin Houses (Collection of United Missouri Bank of Kansas City). Their historical place and physical setting distinguish the houses on the island. Ruth Faller writes "...as you come into the north end of the harbor, but before you reach the wharf, there are twin houses up on the rocks..." (Monhegan- Her Houses, Her People, Melrose, Massachsuetts, 1995) Looking out onto the ocean between the facing structures an open expanse of sea and sky provide an even more overwhelming sense of surrounding space to the isolated island.
Wyeth has continued to build upon the artistic tradition set forth by his realist painter predecessors while painting in an age dominated by abstraction. "His works represent a wonderful extension of the Romantic tradition into the twentieth century. His landscape subjects, his painterly light-filled style, and his emotional involvement with nature, are all indications of his Romantic proclivity. But the artist has added to this nineteenth-century tradition an artistic interpretation, solidly grounded in his own technocratic times." (P. Beecher, in Three Generations of Wyeths, Elmira, New York, 1986, p. 23) Wyeth says of his process that "...in my approach, I don't abstract the forms. My passion is to go as deep within the visual structure of an object or person as one possibly can. It just so happens in the final work I don't abstract it." (as quoted in Jamie Wyeth: Islands, p. 5)
Wyeth comments that "the danger with Maine is that it is so anecdotal and emblematic in terms of pot buoys, pretty houses, pretty lobster traps--'quaint' things. Maine is not that way, Maine has a lot of edge, a lot of angst. In particular, islands..." Summer House, Winter House contains all of this stirring and deeply embedded tension, composed in a stunningly beautiful landscape.
This painting is included in the database of the artist's work being compiled by the Wyeth Center at the William A. Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine.