In a different light The N.C. Wyeth exhibit at Farnsworth Art Museum’s Wyeth Center in Rockland shows an unexpected spectrum of styles

In his commercial illustrations, N.C. Wyeth’s subjects were larger-than-life – fictional heroes, biblical figures, pirates and patriots. But in his personal work, he gained inspiration from the real-life heroes who lived off the land and fished the waters off Port Clyde, Wyeth’s summertime home.

Starting in 1920, Wyeth brought his family to Maine each summer to escape the pressure of his professional life in Chadds Ford, Pa. There, he not only found freedom from his job, but he felt free to experiment with other styles of painting. Though small in size, “N.C. Wyeth in Maine,” which recently opened at the Farnsworth Art Museum’s Wyeth Center in Rockland, shows an intriguing variety of work spanning 25 years.

“He was trying to almost force himself into different styles,” said Lauren Raye Smith, assistant curator of collections at the Farnsworth. “A lot of things he learned from his illustrations would show up in his personal painting and vice versa.”

Though he dabbled in many techniques in his studio at Eight Bells, the family house in Port Clyde that Wyeth named after a Winslow Homer painting, his mastery of light and color remains constant. His “Portrait of a Young Artist,” clearly influenced by Homer, shows Andrew Wyeth painting in plein-air on the rocks at Cannibal Shore in the village of Martinsville. In the background, waves crash dramatically, sending up a splash of translucent spray behind the substantial, walnut-brown rocks.

In his untitled painting of a lobsterman, overlapping shards of luminous blues and greens convey motion and energy in the water, while the chocolate-brown rocks look sharp and splintery. The painting, inspired by the Russian Rayonist movement, brings to mind the later watercolors of John Marin, which show a distinct cubist influence. But Wyeth’s interpretation is less about line than it is about the play of light off a choppy sea.

“There’s just a real sense of movement,” Smith said.

This isn’t the only painting with a Russian flair. Wyeth’s friend Christian Brinton, an art critic, introduced him to Rayonism as well as several other Russian modes of painting. This show features several paintings influenced by the country’s folk art, including the bright, whimsical “Harbor at Herring Gut,” which Smith likens to a hooked rug pattern. The sea gulls are bigger than the boats in this painting, and the rendering of the people and the landscape is at once childlike and sophisticated.

“It’s almost a fantastical view of people and places,” Smith said.

“Fisherman’s Family” shows the simple, nearly faceless, forms of a mother, father and daughter. Their bodies seem illuminated from within, causing them to jump out from the darkened background. In an earlier study, a son was present, and you can still make out his ghostlike form where Wyeth erased him so he could close in tighter on the scene. Through shadow and light, Wyeth glorifies the family’s simple lifestyle and underscores their reliance on the sea.

If you look closely, you can see another ghostlike image in “Wharf at Eight Bells.” The painting shows the tranquil, mirrorlike water behind the home and a tiny boy standing at the end of the wharf. What’s remarkable, however, is the texture. It seems Wyeth took one of his son’s discarded canvases, turned it upside down, and painted over it. You can still see the remnants of that earlier painting.

“He said, ‘Hey, a free canvas,'” Smith said. “It adds to the history of this painting.”

Near this, several Impressionist paintings have their own texture thanks to their thick, dappled paint. In “Breeze O’ Wind, Port Clyde Maine,” light dances on the white-capped water as wind fills the sails of boats in the harbor. In “The Morris House, Port Clyde,” two local men have stopped to chat near a big, gabled white house. In broad, wispy strokes, they look out onto the harbor, taking in the beauty of the scene as they pass the time.

“N.C. fell in love with the area and the people here,” Smith said. “He was into the writings of Thoreau and he saw the Maine people and their attachment to the land as being akin to the ideals of Thoreau. That’s what he was trying to capture with these paintings.”

“N.C. Wyeth in Maine” runs through April 27, 2003, at the Wyeth Center, in the former church behind the Farnsworth Art Museum. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; 1-5 p.m. Sunday through Memorial Day. For information, call 596-6457 or visit www.farnsworthmuseum.org.