Monhegan Island, Maine
Signed and dated lower left: WALTER GRIFFIN ’08
Description
Walter Griffin became active in the Old Lyme artists’ colony around 1905, forming lasting friendships and exhibiting with fellow painters Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Ernest Lawson and John Henry Twachtman. He began taking part in annual shows at the Pennsylvania Academy and the National Academy, which elected Griffin an Associate in 1912, before traveling abroad again in 1908. Prior to departing for Europe, however, Griffin spent a short time on Monhegan Island, Maine, where this pastel of fifish shacks along a rocky shoreline was drawn. Although he worked there only briefly, the island’s isolation and rugged beauty offered him a dose of therapy after his divorce from Lillian Baynes Griffin, a photographer and journalist, whom he married in 1899.
Provenance
Inscriptions
- (verso of board in graphite) Walter Griffin. 1908 / Monhegan Island. Me
- (verso of frame in pencil) Monhegan Island, MAINE, 1908
Labels
Exhibitions
- Light & Color: 150 Years on Paper, Featuring Frank W. Benson & His Contemporaries, Vose Galleries, Boston, April 21 – May 26, 2018
Literature
Condition
The pastel is done directly on the paperboard (which is a wood pulp board) and has some overall minor toning but no obvious fading.