Collection Highlight: "Gulf Hagas" by Joel Babb

Joel Babb (United States, born 1947), Gulf Hagas, 2011, oil on linen, 45 x 64 1/8 inches. Anonymous gift in honor of Dr. Walter Goldfarb, 2021.18. Image courtesy of Luc Demers. © Joel Babb

Realist painter Joel Babb finds inspiration in the Maine landscape. In the mid 1970s he built a studio and residence in Sumner, Maine, which became his permanent home. In the 1990s the artist turned to brooks, ones that flow deep within the forest, for his subjects. Gulf Hagas, for example, is a new acquisition in PMA’s collection and exemplary of his signature style. It is a gorge located in the mountains of northern Maine woods and is often referred to as the Grand Canyon of Maine. Babb regularly visited this gorge, studying the flow of water as well as shifts in light to inform this painting. His process consisted of preparatory sketches made en plein air as well as several digital photographs. For Babb, the gorge also provided an artistic challenge:

“‘Gulf Hagas’ is all about downstream as if you are tumbling down a staircase. There were two new problems—the light and the perspective. All the forms must seem to point to a plane below the horizon and draw the eye down into the distance. Because you are down in a deep gorge much of it is shaded. I was first there in the afternoon when the left bank was in sunlight, but the right side was very dark. I came back the next morning when the sun was raking across the right side and the left side was dark. So the final painting is really a combination of times of day.” [1]”

Babb positions the viewer within the brook, offering a unique perspective on the scene. The painting not only compounds times of day to capture the spirit of the place, but it continues the legacy of early American landscape painting with its emphasis on silence, grandeur, and sublimity.

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[1] Joel Babb in Carl Little, Nature & Culture: The Art of Joel Babb (2013)