The New Hope Artists Colony: John Fulton Folinsbee, Maine

"End of the Day, Gloucester Harbor" by John Folinsbee

"In the mid-1930s, John Fulton Folinsbee and his family began spending their summers in Maine. He bought a farmhouse at Murphy's Corner, between Beth and Wiscasset, in 1949. Despite his intense wariness of the ocean, he embarked on a new aspect of his career - as a marine painter. His 'Off Seguin (Ellingwood Rock)' was awarded the 1952 Palmer Marine Prize by the National Academy of Design. With the prize money, Folinsbee bought a 25-foot motorized Hampton dory (flat-bottomed open boat) that he named "Sketch" and equipped as a floating studio. He wrote:

'One day I suddenly realized that the waves of a heavy sea duplicate what El Greco did in painting the heavy folds of his drapery. The quick turn of the waves is like that of his folds, in that the darkest dark is against the lightest light. The greatest contrast comes at the sharpest point where the wave turns up—where there is a dark, there is a light - it is that way in the folds of El Greco's garments. I've always been fascinated with the way he twists those big folds—exaggeration perhaps, but true in expressing the play of light on form.'

As his son-in-law Peter G. Cook observed, after the dramatic contrasts in weather, light, and landscape of Maine, the Pennsylvania countryside seemed a bit tame. It was Maine that captured the imagination of Folinsbee's later years.

Sadly Folinsbee was diagnosed with cancer in the late 1960s, which further weakened his right arm. He stopped painting in 1971, and died a year later in New Hope."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "John Fulton Folinsbee" on Wikipedia and "About John Fulton Folinsbee" from "The John Folinsbee Catalogue Raisonee.")