Artist:
N.C. Wyeth
(American, 1882 - 1945)
Maine Headland (Black Head, Monhegan Island)
Alternate Title(s):Monhegan Headland; Sounding Sea (Black Head, Monhegan Island)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: ca. 1936 / 1938
Dimensions:
48 1/8 × 52 3/16 in. (122.2 × 132.6 cm)
Collection of the Farnsworth Art Museum
Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997
Accession number: SUPP2000.390
Research Number: NCW: 390
InscribedLower left: N. C. WYETH (underlined)
ProvenanceThe artist; Mrs. N. C. Wyeth; Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Levine; Private collection, Greenwich, CT; (Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE, 1995); Mrs. Elizabeth Noyce, Bremen, ME
Exhibition HistoryChadds Ford, PA, 2003; Kalamazoo, MI, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, "The Wyeths, America's Artists," Jan. 15-April 17, 2011; Rockland, ME, Farnsworth Art Museum, "N. C. Wyeth: Painter," May 21-Dec. 31, 2016;
References
"College Gives Up Painting by N. C. Wyeth," (West Chester, PA,) Daily Local News, Jan. 18, 1946, ps. 1-2, as "Monhegan Headland"; Douglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr., N. C. Wyeth, The Collected Paintings, Illustrations and Murals (New York: Crown Publishers, 1972), illustration in b/w p. 179, as "Sounding Sea (Black Head, Monhegan Island)"; Christine B. Podmaniczky, N. C. Wyeth, Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings (London: Scala, 2008), L.200, p. 767; James D. Balestrieri, "Lesson in Form," American Fine Art Magazine, #28 (July/August 2016), illust. in color, p. 92;
Curatorial RemarksDouglas Allen and Douglas Allen, Jr. probably confused this painting with another seascape titled "The Sounding Sea" of 1934 (dated in West Chester, PA, 1935 exh. catalogue). An archival photograph labeled on the reverse in the artist's hand "The Sounding Sea" associates that title with NCW 1091, not the one illustrated in the Allens' book. An archival photograph of the painting depicting Black Head, a familiar promontory on Monhegan Island, is labeled "Maine Headland," providing the authority for the present title (Brandywine River Museum library, archival photographs). Andrew Wyeth felt that this painting may have been done from imagination after the Sept. 21, 1938 hurricane (NCW to Henriette Wyeth Hurd, Sept. 19, 1938, WFA, planning to leave Port Clyde on Sept. 27th), but no letters record Wyeth's reaction--artistic or otherwise--to the hurricane. After 1938 Wyeth's major work was generally on hardboard instead of canvas.
This painting is probably referred to in a Jan. 18, 1946, clipping from a West Chester newspaper as "Monhegan Headland," which gives this description: "executed on a broad canvas, it depicts formations of rugged rock withstanding boiling blue water and flying spary, under a sombre sky." In 1942, the artist loaned the painting to West Chester State Teachers College; it was reclaimed by the Wyeth family in 1946.
This painting is probably referred to in a Jan. 18, 1946, clipping from a West Chester newspaper as "Monhegan Headland," which gives this description: "executed on a broad canvas, it depicts formations of rugged rock withstanding boiling blue water and flying spary, under a sombre sky." In 1942, the artist loaned the painting to West Chester State Teachers College; it was reclaimed by the Wyeth family in 1946.
Image Source for printed Catalogue Raisonne:Transparency directly from painting
Photo Credit:Melville D. McLean, 2000