Fire in Maine Destroys Works by N.C. and Jamie Wyeth

October 2, 2023

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A fireplace in Port Clyde, Maine, destroyed three work by Jamie Wyeth and one illustration by N.C. Wyeth. The fireplace on the evening of Wednesday, September 27 wreaked havoc in town’s idyllic dockside, destroying the Dip Internet Restaurant, a common retailer, and the Wyeth Artwork Gallery. The downtown house serves as a neighborhood gathering place and a purposeful harbor for lobster fishing.

The St. George Hearth Division arrived on the scene round 11pm final Wednesday and remained till 8:30pm the next night. A fireplace on the Dip Internet is suspected to have launched the blaze. The fireplace additionally broken a wood construction the place an everyday ferry departs for the island of Monhegan.

An authentic illustration for Males of Harmony was destroyed; N.C. Wyeth, “A Man of a Sure Probity and Price, Immortal and Pure (New England; The Wooden Sled)” (1936), oil on Renaissance panel, 34 1/2 x 28 3/8 inches (picture courtesy Bonhams)

The entire gallery’s contents had been destroyed, together with an illustration by Twentieth-century American artist N.C. Wyeth from the 12-painting sequence Men of Concord (1936), which initially accompanied a e-book of Henry David Thoreau journal choices, and three authentic work by Jamie Wyeth, the artist’s grandson.

The Wyeth household has shut ties to Maine. Illustrator N.C. Wyeth continuously depicted the state’s midcoast area from his summer season house in Port Clyde, as did his son Andrew Wyeth. The latter’s well-known portray “Christina’s World” (1948), on view on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York, is ready in South Cushing, a small city on the neighboring peninsula. Andrew Wyeth’s son Jamie is a realist painter who continuously depicts iconic scenes from the New England state and owns a house within the space.

“My household was fairly saddened by the lack of the artwork,” Victoria Browning Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth’s granddaughter and Jamie Wyeth’s niece, advised Hyperallergic. “We’re notably devastated by the misplaced N.C. Wyeth, which is irreplaceable since he’s not alive.” She added that she was grateful that nobody was injured.

The fireplace destroyed the entire works within the Wyeth Artwork Gallery and enveloped nearly all of the constructing (picture courtesy Victoria Browning Wyeth)

Port Clyde has lengthy been a sanctuary for artists and boasts three small galleries. The city has been fast to point out its assist within the wake of final week’s fireplace. On-line, neighborhood members posted previous pictures and work of the intact dockside. A fundraiser shall be held on Sunday, October 8, and other people could make donations to the nonprofit St. George Group Improvement Company. A board of neighborhood members will resolve on the allocation of the funds.

“The buildings had been the center of Port Clyde,” Wyeth stated. “They had been such an necessary place to us all and everybody could be very a lot trying ahead to rebuilding.”