Gertrude Fiske: Summer Training at Ogunquit

"On Pine Hill" by Gertrude Fiske - her home

"There was much more to Gertrude Fiske's training than the rigors of the Museum School. Every summer beginning as early as 1909, she studied and worked beside Maine marine painter Charles H. Woodbury who had established the Ogunquit Summer School of Painting and Drawing in 1898 on the rocky coast of southern Maine at Perkins Cove in Ogunquit. The fishing village on the ocean saw growth as an artists' colony during the first few decades of the twentieth century, attracting notable modernists including George Bellows, Edward Hopper, and Robert Henri. Many of these summer residents were single women who lived within walking distance of Woodbury's cove and studio. They, including Fiske, either bought land from Woodbury or owned homes in proximity to the art colony. [It may also be of interest that Woodbury proposed to Fiske at some point but she turned him down - along with a number of other suitors.]

The shadow and light-infused interiors of her winter training at the Museum School were complemented by the bright, ocean-side summer classes in Ogunquit, and ultimately Fiske evolved a unique style which can be seen in her etchings and sketchbooks, as well as in the many small oil studies she produced concurrent to her larger formal oil paintings. The painterly style that would be the hallmark of her mature works can be first seen in her landscapes and beach scenes. Nothing of the modern landscape she captured was edited out - utility poles and wires, automobiles and airplanes are found in many of her painting compositions. She took the spontaneity and breadth of color found in Woodbury's marine and landscape paintings and in turn applied it to her major figurative works, creating a new, fresh, and impressionistic manner that was much unlike her earlier works. Her association with Woodbury lasted until his death in 1940, and Fiske continued to paint in Ogunquit during each summer, staying at her second home on Pine Hill Road."

To be continued

(Painting by Gertrude Fiske. Excerpts from "Gertrude Fiske: American Master" by Carol Walker Aten (Author), Lainey McCartney (Author), Richard M. Candee (Author) and Gerald W.R. Ward. (Editor).)