The Portland Museum of Art has acquired an oil painting by Winslow Homer and added an egg tempera painting by Andrew Wyeth that it has shown regularly since 1992.

The museum will display both when it reopens Jan. 22 after a three-week closure. The museum will be closed from Jan. 4-22 for a series of maintenance projects and to reinstall art throughout the museum.

The Homer oil painting, “An Open Window,” is from 1872 and represents a departure from most of the PMA’s other Homer paintings and drawings because it shows an interior scene. It is one of four paintings that Homer made of a woman standing with her back to the artist, gazing out a summer window.

In addition to owning hundreds of works by Homer, the museum also owns the studio in Scarborough where he painted from 1884 until his death in 1910. This painting, which was acquired through an anonymous gift and with funding from an anonymous foundation, fills a gap in the museum’s Homer collection. It’s the only Homer painting from the 1870s that the museum owns, director Mark Bessire said in a statement.

The Wyeth painting, “River Cove,” is an egg tempera from 1958 that shows a jetty near Wyeth’s home in Cushing. The PMA has shown it regularly for many years, and it will now become part of the museum’s collection. It came as a donation by David Rockefeller in memory of his son, Richard, who lived in Falmouth until his death in 2014.

 


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