It's a sailboat!

October 9, 2012 4:28 PM

Maybe you know this art print? Years ago I lost a piece of art that I loved but didn't know anything about. It was a sketch of a dry-docked small (single-person? in the perspective it looked to be about a 12-foot craft) sailboat, sail down, in a field of waving shore grass, looking out towards the sea and the back of the boat. The surf was far away, maybe 100 yards or so, and the boat was positioned in the lower right-hand quadrant of the piece though not in the corner. The original medium was was pencil or charcoal on paper. When I see it I think "New England coast" and "loneliness". It was a yellowish-greenish-sepia tone, or perhaps that was just the paper it was litho'd on. I recall it was an official print numbered in pencil on the matting and framed in a low-profile chrome frame. Do you know the work? Can you speculate on the name of the artist? I'd really like to be able to attempt to get another copy.

No (more) Mallrats jokes pls. TIA.

posted by carsonb to media & arts (8 answers total)

Did you get the print in some seaside town in New England? Lots of areas have their own local person whose work is very prominent there. Knowing the town/area would help to narrow it down.

For example, Ruth Rhoads Lepper was an artist in midcoast Maine who did prints of that kind of subject matter.
posted by LobsterMitten at 5:09 PM on October 9, 2012

Just guessing... Schooner Aground by Andrew Wyeth?
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 5:12 PM on October 9, 2012

Or maybe Andrew Wyeth's "Below Dover"?
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:49 PM on October 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

LobsterMitten: I can't remember where I got the print, but it was likely St. Andrews Presbyterian's Spaghetti Dinner and Auction in Tucson, AZ, in silent auction area circa the turn of the century. That's no help, I know. Lepper isn't quite the style, technically. (Subjectively she seems close.) The pencil strokes on my print were fine, wispy, almost hazy.

Marie Mon Dieu, the Wyeth is close- flip the boat round facing the other way and move it to the right, and as it's a schooner it's way too big. This was definitely small craft.

Aha! I knew the name Wyeth was familiar! MonkeyToes has it! Thank you, thank you so much!
posted by carsonb at 5:54 PM on October 9, 2012

It has more color than I remembered. The emotional aspect of my memory desaturated the perceptual side a bit I guess.
posted by carsonb at 6:04 PM on October 9, 2012

(Thank you Marie Mon Dieu for the artist's name.)
posted by carsonb at 6:07 PM on October 9, 2012

For the record, this is exactly like the one I had, though not the actual one (I had mine in 2007). And I think it's $375 to replace. *sigh*
posted by carsonb at 6:10 PM on October 9, 2012

This says $90.
posted by endless_forms at 7:05 AM on October 10, 2012