Fairfield Porter 1907 - 1975

Estate of the artist
Anne E.C. Porter (his wife)
By descent to the present owners

New York, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Fairfield Porter: Paintings, February-March 1965
Huntington, New York, Heckscher Museum of Art; Flushing, New York, Queens Museum; Montclair, New Jersey, Montclair Art Museum, Fairfield Porter Retrospective Exhibition, December 1974-April 1975, no. 17, p. 5, illustrated p. 7
Boston, Massachusetts, Alpha Gallery, Paintings by Fairfield Porter, February-March 1977
Water Mill, New York, Parrish Art Museum; Waterville, Maine, Colby College Museum of Art, Fairfield Porter's Maine, July-September 1977, no. 15
Chicago, Illinois, The Arts Club of Chicago, Fairfield Porter: Paintings and Works on Paper, November-December 1984, no. 10
New York, Hirschl & Adler Modern, Fairfield Porter, 1907-1975, September 1985, no. 18
Chicago, Illinois, Compass Rose Modern and Contemporary Art, Fairfield Porter: Pictures and Words, March-August 1987
New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Fairfield Porter, 1907-1975, September-October 1992
Boston, Massachusetts, Alpha Gallery, Fairfield Porter: Paintings and Works on Paper, February-March 1994
Dayton, Ohio, University Art Galleries, Wright State University, Figuration—Abstraction: Fairfield Porter and Willem de Kooning, September-October 1995, no. 15
Boothbay Harbor, Gleason Fine Art, Fairfield Porter, August-September 1996
Birmingham, Michigan, Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Fairfield Porter, March-April 1998

John T. Spike, Fairfield Porter: An American Classic, New York, 1992, p. 183, illustrated in color
Joan Ludman, "Checklist of Paintings by Fairfield Porter," Fairfield Porter: An American Classic, New York, 1992, p. 294
Joan Ludman, Fairfield Porter: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels, New York, 2001, no. L480, p. 208, illustrated

This work is in very good, original condition. The canvas is unlined. There is slight abrasion at the edges especially in the lower right corner. There is one small surface scratch in the lower center above the horizontal branch, and one small spot of lifting at center right. Under UV: There is no apparent inpainting.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Fairfield Porter painted Woods and Rocks on Great Spruce Head Island, the small island in Penobscot Bay, Maine that the artist’s father James bought in 1913 so his children could learn about ecology. From then until his death in 1975, Porter rarely missed a summer’s visit to the beautiful, yet isolated retreat, where little changed over the years—the family never installed a telephone and the only source of news came by boat from the mainland. The tranquility afforded by the island provided Porter ample time to paint, allowing him to create a substantial body of work in Maine that reflects his deep personal connection to this setting.

Porter likely found the subject of Woods and Rocks off the path leading from the dock to the rambling house his father designed and built for the family. It was on the porch of this home that Porter first experimented with plein air painting as a child. In Woods and Rocks Porter portrays a view of the lushly forested island. By applying green and brown pigments with highlights of white and pink to the canvas in an expressive manner, he imbues the scene with a sense of immediacy, capturing the light and shadow specific to this particular time of day and location. Excluding any sign of human presence, Porter renders a large tree trunk and overgrown foliage prominently in the foreground of the composition. This arrangement compresses the picture plane, collapsing the space that typically separates the viewer from the artist’s subject. As a result, Porter immerses us in the verdant setting as he too would have experienced it.