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Lot Essay
Painted in 1938, Norry Seavey Hauling Traps off Blubber Island encapsulates N.C. Wyeth's unique ability to capture the essence of place. A sweeping vista of Blubber Island off of Port Clyde, Maine, with a lone figure hoisting his lobster traps from the sea, the present work is at once narrative and poetic, demonstrating the artist's dedication to the faithful depiction of his surroundings while imbuing the painting with a sense of magic stemming from his personal response to and fondness for the natural world. In a letter to Sidney Chase regarding Port Clyde Wyeth wrote, "it is the extraction of the abstraction that I want to get out of this beloved spot. Every spot on earth is potential of great interpretation by someone, if he but gives himself up to its underlying beauties rather than to its scenic sensations. " (B.J. Wyeth, The Wyeths: The Letters of N.C. Wyeth, 1901-1945, Boston, Massachusetts, 1971, p. 707) Indeed, Norry Seavey Hauling Traps off Blubber Island demonstrates Wyeth's own compelling love for the coastal village of Port Clyde.
A celebrated illustrator, in the 1930s, Wyeth made a decisive shift in his career by accepting fewer commissions and instead concentrating on the landscape, enjoying the artistic freedom that it provided. After spending a large portion of the decade focusing on landscape painting, in 1939, Wyeth exhibited a selection of this new body of work, many of which were Maine subjects, at Macbeth Gallery in New York. Peter Hurd, Wyeth's son-in-law and an artist himself commended the success of these works, "The paintings are the product of revolt against the inevitable limitation of the art of illustration which Mr. Wyeth has long served with sincerity and grace. Of the illustrator's heritage he takes freely and consciously those components which may relate to painting--a strongly dramatic presentation but one freed from the paraphernalia of archeology[sic]; an ability to establish vividly the quality of a certain moment in which he unfolds the observer and causes him to see, to hear, and above all, to feel. He compels us to stop and ponder with him the surrounding vision of form and color, of radiance and shadow. This world of his is at once grave and lyric." (D. Allen, D. Allen, Jr., N.C. Wyeth, New York, 1972, pp. 189, 191) Indeed, Norry Seavey Hauling Traps off Blubber Island manifests this departure from the compositional constraints of illustration art. Here, Wyeth employs his mature, freer style to create a painting that stirs feeling of awe and wonder while capturing the distinct beauty of the Maine coastline.
Born in Needham, Massachusetts, and settled in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, N.C. Wyeth traveled to the coastal village of Port Clyde, Maine for the first time in 1910. As a native New Englander, Wyeth was drawn to the region and in 1920 he purchased a former sea captain's home with his friend and fellow artist, Sidney M. Chase. Soon after, Wyeth bought out Chase's share in the land and renovated the home, fondly named Eight Bells, for use during the summer holiday. During this time, he built a small studio in Port Clyde to paint during his vacations there. Ever enraptured by the natural world around him, the rugged, untamed coastal landscape inspired Wyeth and he executed a number of compositions of the defining elements of the surrounding region. As Christine Podmaniczky notes, "As his identification with the countryside around Chadds Ford grew in strength, landscape painting increasingly occupied Wyeth's attention. After a short period of creating impressionist views in a variety of styles and techniques, from c. 1909 to 1912, Wyeth rejected this approach in favor of a more academic foundation based on 'a sound initiation into nature's truths'--direct observation and intimate knowledge of the motifs. His landscape work for the remainder of his career was based on this important precept, and many of his favorite motifs, such as familiar brooks and hills, Port Clyde harbor, or beloved structures he painted over and over again to master the pictorial details and divine the more intrinsic nature of each place." (N.C. Wyeth: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 2008, pp. 62-63)
Painted as a gift for Roger Scaife, a friend of the artist and editor at Houghton Mifflin, the present work depicts Blubber Island, also known to locals as Blubber Butt, which is a small body of land located off the coast of Port Clyde. Inspired by Maine customs, Wyeth portrays a local lobsterman, Norry Seavey, laboriously pulling a lobster trap out of the water to examine its contents. Straying from his usual tendency to keep his subjects anonymous, Wyeth chose to identify the man in the title, emphasizing his personal connection to the place. Here, Wyeth skillfully composes a dramatic perspective--the painting's solitary figure appears diminished by the vast sky and the boulders of the island behind him. Wyeth chooses to render the ocean in a bright palette of intense blues mixed with greens integrating a magical and slightly surreal quality into the composition. These surrealist elements are further underscored by the dramatic shadows cast by the rocks on the island and traps on the dory.
Norry Seavey Hauling Traps off Blubber Island is exemplary of Wyeth's highly personal style which combines his training and background as an illustrator with his fascination with the natural landscape. In a letter to his daughter, Ann McCoy, dating to the summer of 1938, the year in which the present work was painted, Wyeth writes of his observation of and reaction to the Maine landscape, "My imagination is suddenly whipped into an almost exalted appreciation of the magnificence of the little isolated and unrelated scene before me, and I am astounded at its vast beauty and its sublime importance, and am made to realize in one poignant spasm, that and magnificence possible for human sight and spiritual pleasure. The limitless ocean itself, the mountains and valleys of the world are of no greater importance in appearance or significance." (The Wyeths: The Letters of N.C. Wyeth, 1901-1945, Boston, Massachusetts, 1971, p. 775) In Norry Seavey Hauling Traps off Blubber Island Wyeth communicates this wonder through the vehicle of his brush, resulting in a timeless depiction of this beloved setting.
A celebrated illustrator, in the 1930s, Wyeth made a decisive shift in his career by accepting fewer commissions and instead concentrating on the landscape, enjoying the artistic freedom that it provided. After spending a large portion of the decade focusing on landscape painting, in 1939, Wyeth exhibited a selection of this new body of work, many of which were Maine subjects, at Macbeth Gallery in New York. Peter Hurd, Wyeth's son-in-law and an artist himself commended the success of these works, "The paintings are the product of revolt against the inevitable limitation of the art of illustration which Mr. Wyeth has long served with sincerity and grace. Of the illustrator's heritage he takes freely and consciously those components which may relate to painting--a strongly dramatic presentation but one freed from the paraphernalia of archeology[sic]; an ability to establish vividly the quality of a certain moment in which he unfolds the observer and causes him to see, to hear, and above all, to feel. He compels us to stop and ponder with him the surrounding vision of form and color, of radiance and shadow. This world of his is at once grave and lyric." (D. Allen, D. Allen, Jr., N.C. Wyeth, New York, 1972, pp. 189, 191) Indeed, Norry Seavey Hauling Traps off Blubber Island manifests this departure from the compositional constraints of illustration art. Here, Wyeth employs his mature, freer style to create a painting that stirs feeling of awe and wonder while capturing the distinct beauty of the Maine coastline.
Born in Needham, Massachusetts, and settled in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, N.C. Wyeth traveled to the coastal village of Port Clyde, Maine for the first time in 1910. As a native New Englander, Wyeth was drawn to the region and in 1920 he purchased a former sea captain's home with his friend and fellow artist, Sidney M. Chase. Soon after, Wyeth bought out Chase's share in the land and renovated the home, fondly named Eight Bells, for use during the summer holiday. During this time, he built a small studio in Port Clyde to paint during his vacations there. Ever enraptured by the natural world around him, the rugged, untamed coastal landscape inspired Wyeth and he executed a number of compositions of the defining elements of the surrounding region. As Christine Podmaniczky notes, "As his identification with the countryside around Chadds Ford grew in strength, landscape painting increasingly occupied Wyeth's attention. After a short period of creating impressionist views in a variety of styles and techniques, from c. 1909 to 1912, Wyeth rejected this approach in favor of a more academic foundation based on 'a sound initiation into nature's truths'--direct observation and intimate knowledge of the motifs. His landscape work for the remainder of his career was based on this important precept, and many of his favorite motifs, such as familiar brooks and hills, Port Clyde harbor, or beloved structures he painted over and over again to master the pictorial details and divine the more intrinsic nature of each place." (N.C. Wyeth: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, 2008, pp. 62-63)
Painted as a gift for Roger Scaife, a friend of the artist and editor at Houghton Mifflin, the present work depicts Blubber Island, also known to locals as Blubber Butt, which is a small body of land located off the coast of Port Clyde. Inspired by Maine customs, Wyeth portrays a local lobsterman, Norry Seavey, laboriously pulling a lobster trap out of the water to examine its contents. Straying from his usual tendency to keep his subjects anonymous, Wyeth chose to identify the man in the title, emphasizing his personal connection to the place. Here, Wyeth skillfully composes a dramatic perspective--the painting's solitary figure appears diminished by the vast sky and the boulders of the island behind him. Wyeth chooses to render the ocean in a bright palette of intense blues mixed with greens integrating a magical and slightly surreal quality into the composition. These surrealist elements are further underscored by the dramatic shadows cast by the rocks on the island and traps on the dory.
Norry Seavey Hauling Traps off Blubber Island is exemplary of Wyeth's highly personal style which combines his training and background as an illustrator with his fascination with the natural landscape. In a letter to his daughter, Ann McCoy, dating to the summer of 1938, the year in which the present work was painted, Wyeth writes of his observation of and reaction to the Maine landscape, "My imagination is suddenly whipped into an almost exalted appreciation of the magnificence of the little isolated and unrelated scene before me, and I am astounded at its vast beauty and its sublime importance, and am made to realize in one poignant spasm, that and magnificence possible for human sight and spiritual pleasure. The limitless ocean itself, the mountains and valleys of the world are of no greater importance in appearance or significance." (The Wyeths: The Letters of N.C. Wyeth, 1901-1945, Boston, Massachusetts, 1971, p. 775) In Norry Seavey Hauling Traps off Blubber Island Wyeth communicates this wonder through the vehicle of his brush, resulting in a timeless depiction of this beloved setting.