Word: portering
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...Porter was born to wealthy parents in 1907 and spent his childhood in the suburbs of Chicago before attending the Milton Academy. He gradated from Harvard in 1928 with a degree in fine arts and immediately tuned to the intellectual community of New York City for inspiration, which at first he found studying under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League But a after a few years of searching for a novel direction, moving through New York's most sophisticated artistic circles in the process. Porter developed a nostalgic admiration for the straight forward beauties of Impressionism...
...city, with its dirty streets and sleazy neighborhoods, did not lend itself to Porter's artistic conception of reality, as recalled in his few drab ad tentative attempts at scenes of life in Union Square made in the early forties. So Porter packed up his easel and relocated to the posh seashore resort town of Southampton, Long Island, spending the summers at a vacation home in Great Spruce Head. Maine, In these WASPy environs, he felt at home with everything from the foliage to the patio furniture...
...EVERYWHERE HE LOOKED, the artist found light and color flooding into his surroundings--the only hard part was getting the luminescence on canvas. To that end, Porter used a nearly fluorescent palette of pastel-lime pinks, greens and blues, as well as a special wax-based matte surface in order to capture the illumination he desired. He then explored every facet of interior design and its relationship to the outdoors, his painting always done with an impeccable air of cleanliness and calm spaciousness evident, for example, in the autumn leaves, long shadows and golden afternoon sun of October Interior...
Fairfield Porter might well go down in history as the preppy painter par excellence. It is a wealthy and confident artist who stands next to his wood-burning stove in his chinos, blue button-down Oxford and knit tie (his work clothes) in the Self-Portrait of 1968. Then there are picnics on the golf course in Lunch Under the Elm Tree, charming portraits of perfectly attired little girls (his daughters), and a relaxing backyard clay court match in dress whites in The Tennis Game of 1972. Even Bruno, the family golden retriever, makes an appearance...
Outdoors in the bright sunlight, Porter was at his very best, in the "oasis of verdure"--as Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus would call it--of suburban landscaping, or among the towering evergreens on the Mine coast. Porter is free to enjoy the boats, lawns and inlets of Island Farmhouse (1969) and the beauty of the countryside speaks for itself, basically unaltered by the artist's interpretation. Or the observer can join Porter for some salty see spray on The Mall Boat (1973) in which, like scene form On Golden Pond, the skipper at the helm navigates through...