“A Century of Maine Prints: 1880s to 1980s” at Portland Museum of Art
The state of Maine takes stock of its visual history—200 hundred years worth—in an unprecedented six-month, 25-institution celebration of fine art prints. Portland Museum of Art offers a rich, oversized slice of “The Maine Print Project,” half the pie actually, in their newly mounted show entitled “A Century of Maine Prints: 1880s to 1980s.”

The rugged coast and its islands drew (and continue to draw) chroniclers, etchers and sketchers. The show’s century contains natives and transplants: fine artists from Sweden, Lithuania, Russia, Java and Germany, in addition to countless artistic summer people and city refugees, from Homer to Hopper to Wyeth.

After seeing these three gentlemen, in particular, handle oils and watercolors so adeptly, it’s fascinating to see the simplicity of their monochromatic etching. The show’s introductory images are Edward Hopper’s “The Monhegan Boat” (1918) and “The Lighthouse” (1923), which portrays York’s beloved Nubble. Hopper summered in Maine as a break from an early job as a commercial illustrator. These prints, on loan from the Whitney Museum, are visually surprising if you’ve only ever seen his dark, brooding paintings.

Winslow Homer’s early career included time spent as an engraver for Harper’s Weekly. His 1884 etching, “Saved,” a stark image of a rescue at sea, shows his impeccable skill with and love of the line. The work was a return to printmaking’s simplicity (and possible multiplicity) after a much more complex painting of the same subject matter (“Lifeline”), which sold on the first day of its exhibition. Homer often sought larger audiences for his paintings by reproducing them as etchings ex post facto, working his large plates during the summer in Prouts Neck, Maine, and taking them back to New York for printing.

Carroll Thayer Berry renders “Winslow Homer’s Studio, Prouts Neck circa 1937” adoringly, or perhaps worshipfully, from ship rather than shore, the architecture strikingly reminiscent of Germanic woodcuts. Meanwhile, the playful sea rolls in like a Japanese batik, throwing both the point of view and the viewer slightly off kilter and lending another cultural flavor to the aesthetic mix.

Fast forward to the other end of the show’s century (1980), inland from coast to field, and we are perused with curiosity by five black-bodied, white-faced cud-chewers, part of Jamie Wyeth’s “Farm Series” and titled for the numbered tags in their ears, “91, 75, 86, 93, 84.” The Maine era has moved from milkers to beeves, and Wyeth honors the pastoral and pastural, personalizing the bovines beautifully with their distinguishing facial marking and bald-faced personality, only to rob them completely by numbering.

The predominance of the show’s work is from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and that’s its strength as well. The colored prints of the 1960s and ’70s haven’t the authority or love of line and inference that make their predecessors more endearing.

Fairfield Porter’s “The Dog at the Door” (1971) leaves viewers with a visual analogy for the show. Our dog is a black-spotted setter and points toward home, or “in.” He shares the same coloration with a lobster boat downbay whose prow points toward the sea or “out.” They’re both seeking entrance to larger and smaller places in the world, and both adventure and safe harbor await you if you nose your way into the oncoming.

Portland Museum of Art
A Century of Maine Prints: 1880s to 1980s
through Dec. 10
7 Congress Square, Portland, Maine
207-775-6148
www.portlandmuseum.org

more about “The Maine Print Project: Celebrating 200 Years of Printmaking in Maine”
Three other nearby venues are among the 25 institutions participating in “The Maine Print Project.”

Nine venues are within an hour’s drive of Portsmouth, including the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Old York Historical Society and Kennebunk’s River Tree Center for the Arts. While larger museums are tending to larger group shows, small celebrations of individual artists abound.

Ogunquit features “The Prints of Peggy Bacon.” Bacon (1895-1987) was a leading figure at the Ogunquit arts colony in the summers of the 1940s and ’50s, building on the work of its 1890s founder, Charles Woodbury (1864-1940). Both Bacon and Woodbury have lovely and singular works in the Portland Museum show.

Old York offers “Scott Schnepf: Etchings and Woodblock Prints,” and Kennebunk takes the macro view, offering “The Art of Printmaking.” The cleverest title award goes to Portland’s Space Gallery with “Arts Formally Known as Prints.”
If your leaf-peeping gets rained out or needs additional color, check out the whole grand fine arts endeavor at www.maineprintproject.org, where exhibitors, hours and contact information is listed.