Live Auction 18432American Art
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975)
Lot 114

Fairfield Porter (1907-1975)

High Tide

Closed28 October 2020

Price Realised

USD 162,500

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Fairfield Porter (1907-1975)
High Tide
signed and dated 'Fairfield Porter 73' (lower center)—signed and dated again and inscribed with title (on the reverse)
oil on board
22 x 18 in. (55.9 x 45.7 cm.)
Painted in 1973.

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York.
Firschbach Gallery, New York.
Alpha Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts.
Susan Shatter, New York, acquired from the above, by 1991.
Private collection, New York, circa 1990s.
Private collection, Texas, by descent.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Specialist note

Ever since he was a child, Fairfield Porter spent the warmer months at his family’s home on Great Spruce Head Island, off the coast of Maine in Penobscot Bay. Porter grew to love the Maine atmosphere, once quoted as saying, “I’ve been to Maine almost every summer since I was six. It’s the place where most of all I feel myself to belong.” (Fairfield Porter’s Maine, Southampton, New York, 1977)

Portraying the rocky shore and coastal islands of the area, High Tide of 1973 reflects the artist’s personal connection with the Maine landscape, while exhibiting the more abstracted aesthetic of his later works. Reducing and simplifying the landforms, what remains is a pure representation of his surroundings. As in all of Porter’s best works, High Tide delights in exploring the line “between a reaction to natural light and a search for invented color.” (K. Moffett, “The Art of Fairfield Porter,” in Fairfield Porter: Realist Painter in an Age of Abstraction, exhibition catalogue, Boston, Massachusetts, 1982, p. 38)