The Portland Press Herald / The Maine Sunday Telegram

Land, Sea and SkyA painter devoted his career to capturing the moods of nature on Monhegan Island and in New England.

BOB KEYES

— By

click image to enlarge

click image to enlarge

Additional Photos Below

Select images available for purchase in the
Maine Today Photo Store

Staff Writer

It might be unkind to call Jay Connaway ''a poor man's Wins-low Homer.'' But it would not be inaccurate.

Connaway, a student of the sea, is the subject of a small but satisfying exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art, ''Moods of Nature: Jay Connaway and the Landscapes of New England.''

The exhibition explores the New England paintings of Connaway but focuses on his work in Maine. The artist, who died in 1970 at age 76, was an American painter best known for his dramatic portrayals of the frothy, ferocious ocean.

Connaway explored the subject with great intensity. He lived on Monhegan from 1931 to 1947 and singularly dedicated his attention to the intersection of the land, sea and sky.

The mood of this exhibition is dark and forboding, even cold. The ocean's furor is never in question. The rolling clouds are filled with rain and snow, and the ocean is restless and rarely calm. Trees bow in the wind, and the waves seem to do nothing but crash with hurricane force.

The exhibition illustrates what Connaway's wife, Louise, described in a letter to the Lewiston Journal in 1942:

''Monhegan in winter is so lovely with the quiet peace of its isolation, except for the occasional disturbance of the elements. Especially beautiful when it is blanketed with soft white snow, as it has been recently; with the strong winds whistling through the green spruces, and the wind-blown spray bursting in air, as the surf dashes ceaselessly and recklessly against our rugged coast. Several days ago we had a real good, agitated sea. It blew a strong south-easterly, with the entire coastline a frothy white, churning mass of boiling sea and flying spume.''

Connaway was an expressionist painter with muscular, gestural technique, observed PMA chief curator Thomas Denenberg. He gobbed up his brush with oil paint and applied it thickly on his canvases and hard boards. A plein-air and studio painter, Connaway seemed to delight in foul weather, and approached his subjects almost scientifically, Denenberg said.

He seemed particularly concerned about making his paintings accurate.

''It's almost as if he painted with a geologist's eye,'' Deneberg said, pausing to consider the rocks in one of Connaway's Monhegan paintings. ''This was a man who was excited about the existential life of living in Maine.

''Just as Homer did in Prouts Neck, Connaway parked himself on Monhegan and looked at the water. It's all about the culture of the Maine coast. He imbued the question, 'How do you become part of the island environment?' He lived on Monhegan 17 years, and made hundreds and hundreds of Monhegan paintings.''

In all, there are about three dozen paintings in this show, most from Monhegan. The rest are from Vermont, where Connaway moved with his family after leaving Maine.

A large number of the paintings in ''Moods of Nature'' come to the museum courtesy of Marjorie B. Osborne of Boston. Now 100 years old, Osborne took painting lessons from Connaway.

''He was a wonderful friend, and he had a wonderful sense of humor. He was a great person to be around,'' said Osborne, who traveled to Portland to view the exhibition last week.

''I happened to be studying with another painter in Vermont, and not a very good one. After we finished our lesson, Jay said, 'Now that you are all finished, we'll go downtown and see how the scene should be painted.' Of course, it was an exhibit of Connaway's paintings.''

Osborne became a close family friend over the years, and also a loyal patron. In addition to taking lessons, she helped support Connaway by buying many of his paintings, which constitute the bulk of the Portland show.

Connaway enjoyed great success during his life. At the time of his death, he was considered among the foremost marine painters in America, which was somewhat ironic given that he was born in Indiana.

Connaway came to New York to study at the Arts Students League under William Merritt Chase, and then served in World War I. After leaving the Army, he stayed behind in Paris to study at the Academie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. When he returned to the United States, he settled in New England.

He had more than 70 solo exhibitions, and showed his work at many of the leading galleries of his day, as well as at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Keith Oehmig, who owns the Wiscasset Bay Gallery, has represented the Connaway estate for about 25 years. At any given time, Oehmig shows four or five Connaway paintings in his gallery. To coincide with the Portland show, he's increased that number to a dozen.

''My favorite work of his is the work he did out on Monhegan, the plein-air, direct observation paintings. They are very juicily painted, very bold,'' Oehmig said. ''He had a modern sensibility in the way that he approached his work. Some of his work is traditional and predictable, but some had a modern sense of design and force.''

In addition to receiving Connaway paintings from the artist's estate, Wiscasset Bay Gallery acquires them from the public.

Connaway was wildly prolific, producing hundreds of paintings. Because he has been deceased not quite 40 years, his work is still circulating among first-generation collectors and their heirs.

Oehmig told a story about a phone call he received from a gentleman in Buffalo, N.Y., a few weeks ago.

''This guy was cleaning out the attic of his father's house and discovered two Connaway oil paintings. They didn't mean anything to him. He was ready to throw the paintings away and save the frames. He did a little research and came across our gallery on the Internet.''

Those paintings from Buffalo are now for sale in Wiscasset.

During these glorious days of fall, Connaway's paintings chillingly remind us of what's in store in the months ahead -- something that his wife, Louise, wrote of in her dispatch from Monhegan to the Lewiston Journal in winter 1942:

''The cloud and sky effects have been unusual and ever changing, which makes Jay happy and fills his mind with ideas. He goes to his studio on the back of the island, base of White Head, and paints quiet seclusion, with no one to interrupt.

''The only sounds are the 'music' of the seas outside his window.''

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:

bkeyes@pressherald.com