Fairfield Porter 1907 - 1975

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1974

New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Recent Work by Fairfield Porter, March 1974, no. 24, illustrated

Hilton Kramer, "Art: Fairfield Porter," New York Times, March 9, 1974, p. 25
John T. Spike, Fairfield Porter: An American Classic, New York, 1992, pp. 253, 305
Joan Ludman, Fairfield Porter: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels, New York, 2001, no. L874, p. 299, illustrated

Very good condition, unlined, some craquelure in sky, faint stretcher bar mark along top edge. Under UV: fine.
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The Tender, painted in 1973, depicts the open waters and surrounding islands as seen from Fairfield Porter family's summer home on Great Spruce Head Island off the coast of Maine.  From 1912, the year his father purchased the island, until his death in 1975, Fairfield 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 quietude afforded by the island provided Porter ample time to paint and allowed the artist to create a substantial body of work in Maine which reflected his deep personal connection to the region. 

According to Porter's wife, Anne, the white skiff depicted in The Tender is most likely the mail boat, connected by a thin bow line to an unseen dock.  Swirling strokes of blues and greens, interrupted by highlights of white, capture the movement and energy of the brisk waters and white caps of the Atlantic Ocean, while the deep green of the distant island's trees anchor the horizon.  In a 1974 review of Porter's latest works published in the New York Times, Hilton Kramer wrote: "In approximately 50 examples of Mr. Porter's recent paintings...there are both a new stylistic note and salutary reminder of the artist's familiar strengths. A new note is to be found in the somewhat looser, more expressionistic articulations of painterly form in pictures such as The Tender ...Yet so complete is Mr. Porter's authority in every pictorial task - in capturing the effects of light and converting them into their formal equivalents especially – that he is able to assimilate this 'innovation' without any loss of identity" (March 9, 1974, p. 25).