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Kittery Point Aritst Featured in Two Exhibits 

Wikipedia’s topmost fact about Russell Cheney is that the artist was a member of Yale's Skull and Bones secret society. Scholar Richard Candee says that’s nothing. Cheney was way more interesting than that.

Candee should know. He's spent years cataloging Cheney's paintings and has built a database of almost 1,000 Cheney-related items. Candee is curator of a new exhibit opening at the Portsmouth athenaeum.

"His paintings are still turning up," Candee says. Cheney was a Seacoast summer visitor, sharing a Kittery Point, Maine cottage with his partner, the well-know author F.O. Matthiessen from 1927 until Cheney's death in 1945.

About 40 paintings will be on display in the Athenaeum's Randall Gallery. The show is titled: "The Art of the Domestic -- Kittery and Southern Maine." Another 50 or works will be on display at the new Discover Portsmouth visitor center sponsored by the Portsmouth Historical Society. The center, opening this summer, is in the former Portsmouth Library building across from the historical society at the convergence of Middle, Congress and Islington streets. That exhibit is entitled: "From Impressionism to Yankee Modernism: Portsmouth and the New Hampshire Coast." Both exhibits open June 1.

In 1928, Kittery newspaperman Horace Mitchell Jr. interviewed Cheney for the Portland Sunday Transcript. "I like Kittery Point," Cheney told him. "It's a swell little town."

Mitchell wrote admiringly: "The pictures he [Cheney] has made of Kittery Point and the vicinity fairly breathe the spirit of the old town." Candee said Cheney's works were exhibited regularly in Portsmouth at places ordinary people went, including a local coal company office.

"Not only was he a local character painting the South End and waterfront, but people got to see his paintings," Candee says.

Dorothy Adlow, art critic for the Christian Science Monitor, called Cheney "a New England artist who enjoyed the exhilarating influence of modern French painting … a modern American romantic."

Cheney, born in 1881 to a Connecticut family of well-to-do silk manufacturers, had deep roots in New England. From 1910 to 1915, he summered at York Harbor, painting out of doors at York and Ogunquit, Maine, and studying with Charles Woodbury.

In a 1996 essay now updated for the Web at russellcheney.com, Patricia Heard wrote of the artist's strong connection to Portsmouth. "Cheney became a familiar sight on the streets of Portsmouth," she wrote, "and a crowd often gathered around his easel." Heard was the guest curator of a Cheney exhibit at the Athenaeum in 1996.

Cheney’s painting of local fisherman Howard Lathrop became part of the Portsmouth Public Library collection through the efforts of Dorothy Vaughan. Heard described Vaughan as "a good friend of Cheney’s."

Richard Hyde is the present owner of the Cheney house and studio on Old Ferry Lane in Kittery. He remembers being in charge of the artist’s many cats when he was a boy. Hyde was paid ten cents per night to keep a cat named Pretzel in the house and five cents for one named Baby. "If they got out -- there was a fine of twenty cents," Heard reaclls.

A visit to Cheney's studio will be part of a daylong symposium on Aug. 2, "Yankee Modernism in Maine." Co-sponsored by the Kittery Art

Other events related to the Athenaeum exhibit include curator Candee's gallery talks on Russell Cheney on June 28 ("New Discoveries"), July 19 ("The Art of the Domestic"), Aug. 9 ("Yankee Modernism in Kittery") and Aug. 30 ("Russell Cheney: American and New England Master"). All talks are at the Athenaeum at 11 a.m. For reservations and information, call 603-431-2538.

The Portsmouth Historical Society will also host a series of talks. The first, July 12, deals with "Cheney's Training and Early Work." Others are: July 26, "Depression Portsmouth;" Aug. 16, "Cheney's New Castle paintings;" Sept. 6, "Coal Pockets and Triton, Portsmouth Waterfront;" Sept. 20, "Painting the Seasons: Snow or No Snow;" Oct. 4, "Photography and Painting;" and Oct. 25, "Yankee Modernism and the Seacoast." All are at 11 a.m. RSVP for lectures at 603-436-8420.

The Portsmouth Historical Society exhibit runs through Oct. 31 and is open daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Athenaeum exhibit at 6-8 Market Square runs through Sept. 6 and is open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, 1-4 p.m.

For more information, go to www.russellcheney.com, www.portsmouthatheaeum.org and www.portsmouthhistory.org