An artist who combined realism with abstraction, James Fitzgerald is best known for his images of Maine, including depictions of Monhegan Island and Mt. Katahdin.
James Fitzgerald was born in Boston and studied from 1919 to 1923 at the Massachusetts School of Art with Cyrus Dallin, Wilbur Hamilton, and Ernest Major. He enrolled and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1924. In 1928, a trip he planned to Alaska was cancelled, and he went instead to California. In 1929 he built a studio in Monterey and lived on Cannery Row, the subject of a novel by John Steinbeck. Fitzgerald and Steinbeck developed a fraught friendship. Fitzgerald was also a friend of Edward Ricketts, the scientist who was the basis for “Doc” in Steinbeck’s novel, and of the author Robinson Jeffers. While living in Monterey, Fitzgerald painted murals for the Works Progress Administration.
James Fitzgerald, Monterey Ranch, California, ca. 1930s
At some point before 1938, James Fitzgerald began to summer regularly on Monhegan Island, Maine, establishing a studio on Fish Beach. He used a boat to travel around the island and to transport his painting and sketching materials. In 1952, Fitzgerald purchased the studio of Rockwell Kent.
James Fitzgerald created watercolors and oils. For the latter, he often made his own black paint by boiling “black oil,” following a recipe of the old masters. Using outlining and a strong sense of geometry, he created locked his forms into continuous arrangements across the surface, demonstrating his modernist awareness. He captured many facets of Monhegan life, from the quietude of the village to fishing boats battling stormy seas.
Fitzgerald served in the marines in World War I. He traveled frequently, visiting Jamaica, Nova Scotia, the Canary Islands, and the Isle of Aran, Ireland, where he died in 1971.
Over the course of his career, James Fitzgerald frequently exhibited his work, showing at the California Water Color Society, the Carmel Art Association, the National Academy of Design, and the Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles. Fitzgerald’s work may be found in the collection of Monterey High School, the State Museum Resource Center, Sacramento, California; the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
LNP
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