Willard Metcalf: Renaissance in Maine

"Ebbing Tide (Version 2)" by Willard Metcalf

"In late 1903 or early 1904 Willard Metcalf left New York for his parents' home in Maine, near Damariscotta, an acre known as Clark's Cove. He stopped teaching for awhile, at least in New York, and went up to Maine to paint and to think. It was an effort to try to pull his life together, professionally and personally, and to do that he turned to nature - to the landscape he had always had an affinity for. 

When Metcalf reached Clark's Cove he began to paint what he deeply and honestly felt about the natural world. It was his self-designated 'renaissance.' From 1904 he worked in a more assured and relaxed manner, responding to this area's craggy coastline, its softer inland hills, and its enveloping silence. He painted in Walpole, East Boothbay, and Boothbay. He pained on the banks of the Damariscotta River, occasionally pitching a tent there, and he painted in the Penobscot Bay region. 

"Ebbing Tide (Version 2)," for example, is a view of the Bay from Frank Benson's house on North Haven Island and is painted in the bright color and broken brushwork of Impressionism. He did 'Ebbing Tide' in 1907, but the confidence of its manner came about in 1904, during that full year in Maine when he also painted 'The Landing Place,' 'Afternoon Breeze,' 'Spring on the River,' and many others." 

To be continued

(Excerpt from "Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf" by  Elizabeth de Veer and Richard J. Boyle.)