TidesNet—Online Collections Entry Detail

DescriptionA painting by Francis Hamabe of the construction of the Cutler towers as part of the U.S. Navy’s very low frequency or VLF shore radio station built in Cutler, Maine in 1960. Francis Hamabe was an American artist of Japanese and Swedish heritage who was born in 1917 in Orange, New Jersey. After high school, he atttended the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts also began a career as an illustrator. During World War II he spent four years in the U.S. Army and afterwards, in 1946, he attended the Rhode Island School of Design under the G.I. Bill. Shortly afterwards he moved to Maine with his new wife, Sydney Gardner, of Boston, to live in her family’s summer home in Stockton Springs on Penobscot Bay. He is perhaps best known for his silk screen prints, but he also did oil paintings and ink drawings. He taught at many places in Maine, the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, the Bangor Children’s Art Center and Bangor Art Society, the Blue Hill Consolidated Schoool, and for seven years at the University of Maine at Machias. He was initial art director for Down East Magazine and produced many covers for the magazine. In 1952 he co-founded the Maine Coast Artists cooperative (later the Center for Maine Contemporary Art) with Denny Winters, William and Stell Shevis, William Thon, Mildred Burrage and William Kienbusch. He died in 2002. The painting was a gift to the Tides Institute from Christopher Monkhouse, then a senior museum curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, who long summered in Machiasport, Maine. Photo caption: Painting by Francis Hamabe of the construction of the Cutler towers as part of the U.S. Navy’s very low frequency or VLF shore radio station built in Cutler, Maine in 1960. CUTLER TOWERS, FRANCIS HAMABE PAINTING, 1960! Oil on canvas painting in our collections that shows the construction of the U.S. Navy’s VLF (very low frequency) radio station towers in Cutler, Maine. Painting dates to 1960 and is the work of American artist, Francis Hamabe (1917-2002). Gift of Christopher Monkhouse.