WINTER HARBOR — The Littlefield Gallery celebrates the life and legacy of longtime Maine painter and educator Vincent Hartgen with an exhibition that is on view through Sept. 15. The show is a retrospective of Hartgen’s paintings of the Schoodic Peninsula near the gallery.

A reception with members of Hartgen’s family will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday. Proceeds from sales benefit the University of Maine art department, where Hartgen taught for many years. He died in 2002.

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The work of Vincent Hartgen, pictured below in 1984 at work on the Schoodic Peninsula, is exhibited at the Littlefield Gallery in Winter Harbor. Courtesy images

Vincent Hartgen

The show is curated by James Linehan, chair of the UMaine art department. For this show, 33 pieces were restored and reframed.

Hartgen loved Schoodic, and made many paintings there. In an email, his son Stephen wrote, “Hartgen’s creativity soared in the 1940s when he came to Maine and found so much inspiration in its forests, coasts and mountain glens. His appreciation of the Maine woods and coast intensified as he explored nature’s power and simplicity.

“The enduring and yet eroding face of nature gave him endless material from which to work. He would sketch the headland of Schoodic Point hundreds of times. But every time, he would see it differently, in varied color and light, in the detail of delicate curls of a fallen leaf, the weathering of ancient gnarled wood or the infinitesimal erosion of the sea on black basalt and pink granite. That is what gives his work the timeless and enduring quality that admirers have treasured over the years. To anyone who has experienced Maine outdoors, Hartgen’s art seems to say, ‘See, this is essential, this is elemental, this is basic, this is Maine.’ “

Littlefield Gallery, 145 Main St., Winter Harbor, is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Visit littlefieldgallery.com for information.

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