New book surveys Monhegan artists Carl Little retraces island’s history

Carl Little, the ubiquitous arts writer in Maine, was a latecomer to Monhegan Island. Artists have been going there steadily for 150 years, and Little’s first trip was in 1990, as research for a lecture he was preparing for the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. Still, it’s easy to see the justice and romance in Little finally making the journey aboard the Laura B, the seasonal ferry that shuttles visitors and residents between Port Clyde and Monhegan’s busy town dock.

For someone of Little’s substantial visual arts background, the air above Muscongus Bay must have buzzed with the old images – from Robert Henri, George Bellows, Rockwell Kent – of crashing waves, weather-worn houses and fishermen at work. Those same images can be found in Little’s newest book, “The Art of Monhegan Island,” his 10th art publication with picture editor Arnold Skolnick and their fourth collaboration with Down East Books. The book reproduces 113 works by more than 80 artists from the 19th and 20th centuries.

“Each of the artist colonies in Maine has its own greatness,” said Little the other day from his office at the Maine Community Foundation in Ellsworth, where he is director of communications. He was referring not just to the subject of the new collection but also to artist groups in Ogunquit and Mount Desert Island. “But the thing I admire the most about Monhegan – and this is true for the others, too – is that you can trace the whole history of the American aesthetic.”

He delineated the styles: Hudson River School, the Impressionists, the Ashcan School, realism, abstract art, all of which are represented in the new book.

Little’s Maine and New England book projects have often been filled with his own impressions about art, place and local color. This one has more research about community life, he said, in part because he has been influenced by his work at MCF, a philanthropic organization dedicated to promoting civic connections, and because he wanted to distinguish his book from “Monhegan: The Artists’ Island,” a well-received 1995 coffee-table book that also surveys the art of the island.

“The island has inspired so much work, there could be five or six volumes devoted to this subject,” said Little. “While the first Monhegan book was wonderful in showing the wide range of artists on Monhegan, this one is a little less democratic.”

In addition to presenting works by well-known artists, Little and Skolnick have included many painters who may be well known in artist circles but are less recognizable to lay readers. It’s worth noting that the artists whose work we generally associate with Monhegan are men, but Little and Skolnick have increasingly added the names and validated the work of women such as Sarah McPherson, a student of Henri, Joanne Scott, Carol Sloane, Diana Young and Alice Kent Stoddard.

Because Monhegan is only about 2 miles long and less than a mile wide, anyone writing about it must contend with the geography. Little does so by separating the chapters into locales around the island: the harbor, the village, Cathedral Woods, the headlands. In this way, the book reads like a tour guide mingling history, art and present-day life.

To complement his own writing, Little added excerpts from literature, segments of letters, poetry and anecdotes from other writings about Monhegan. One of the most intriguing pieces is an opening paean by the painter Jamie Wyeth, who owns Rockwell Kent’s old house on the island. He compares the island to a first lover remembered “perhaps passionately, occasionally longingly, sometimes angrily, but always.”

One of his favorite spreads, Little said, includes two contemporary paintings joined on the page by Jan Bailey’s poem “Cathedral Woods: giving thanks.” “The Art of Monhegan Island” is best seen as Little’s own poem of gratitude for the art, the artists, the island and its community, and that first voyage across the water 15 years ago.

“The Art of Monhegan Island” is available at bookstores and directly from Down East Books at (800) 685-7962 and online at www.downeastbooks.com. Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.