Bike Into the Maine Canvas
The rugged and raw beauty of Maine has been a lure to many of America’s foremost landscape artists. Man versus the chaotic forces of nature, particularly fishermen struggling against powerful nor’easters, kept Winslow Homer busy on the boulder-strewn shores of Prouts Neck for more than two decades. Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, George Bellows, and Rockwell Kent all painted Monhegan Island’s 160-foot cliffs, meadows, and quaint fishing communities in their own distinctive styles like the bold black and white woodcuts by Kent. Monhegan is also a favorite subject of Jamie Wyeth, whose father Andrew Wyeth and grandfather N.C. Wyeth all summered on the Maine coast. Indeed, Andrew met his wife and her best friend Christina Olson in Maine. Olson is the woman lying down in the tall grass of Wyeth’s iconic painting, Christina’s World.