Object Details
Object Essay
Cathedral Rock is “a part of a geological formation known as ‘the Ovens,’ located near Sand Point between Salisbury Cove and Hulls Cove within the Town of Bar Harbor on the Western shore of Frenchman’s Bay.”1Letter, Robert R. Pyle to William Kloss, October 26, 1989, Curatorial Files, Northeast Harbor Library, Maine. The author wishes to thank Mr. Pyle for research assistance. A photograph from an 1885 guidebook to Mount Desert Island clearly shows the rock formation. The “guzzle,” the vertical hole in the rock formation, is found in both painting and photography, as is the distinctive notch in the cliff face.2Martin, 74–75 and passim. The slang name “squeaker’s guzzle” derives from both the tall narrow shape (gullet) of the tunnel in the rock and the sounds (guzzling and squeaking) made when water is forced through it at high tide.
The identity of the town beyond the fleet of ships is unknown. Robert R. Pyle points out that, “the shoreline on the horizon is correctly placed and in perspective for the settlement of Lemoine on the mainland. However, Lemoine has never been built-up along the shore like that. . . . In addition, the concentration of sailing vessels . . . along that Western shore of Frenchman’s Bay is highly unlikely—not to say dangerous.”3See note 1. We must assume that Granville Perkins has combined two or more studies into a single painting. As a professional painter of theatrical scenery, he would have found this second nature.
Throughout the 19th century, Mount Desert was a favorite locale for landscape and seascape painters, such as Thomas Doughty, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Frederic E. Church. These and other artists chose the contrasting aspects of the island according to their temperament or mood of the moment.4Wilmerding et al. 1988, 107–23.
Granville Perkins opted for the picturesque, introducing so many strolling or lolling people on the near shore that the painting becomes as much genre as landscape. This is consistent with an 1885 guidebook description by Clara Barnes Martin of the “gravel beach . . . on which quaint picnic parties have been given. . . . [The Ovens] are worth at least a double visit, one by land and one by water.” Mrs. Martin’s comment that “the shadows from the west increase the effect both of height and depth” may explain why the guzzle in Perkin’s painting seems larger than it does in the photograph in her book.5Martin, 75. The rounded boulders and the stratified wall of rock are as characteristic of the area’s geology as is the tunnel that erosion has cut through the cliff.
Born in Baltimore, Perkins became an apprentice scene painter at Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Theater as a teenager. He pursued this profession in Richmond, Baltimore, and New York, where he was “scenic artist” at Niblo’s Garden with the Ravel family, a traveling opera family. He even accompanied the Ravel company on a tour of South America and the West Indies.6Montgomery 1889, 291–304; Manthorne, 188. For references to Niblo’s Garden and the Ravel troupe, see Nevins 1927, 1: 271; 2: 657, 662, and 772–73.
It was during that tour that he sketched the luxurious tropical scenery from which he later made paintings. The paintings apparently had some vogue, but the unnamed writer (probably S. R. Koehler) in Montgomery’s American Art felt that “his happiest efforts are in the delineation of marine and coast scenery,” precisely what appears in Squeaker’s Guzzle.7Koehler, 292. Perkins abandoned theatrical work around 1851 and turned to illustration, drawing for wood engravings in such periodicals as P. T. Barnum’s Illustrated News, Frank Leslie’s Weekly and later for Harper’s Weekly, for which he supplied drawings of naval engagements during the Civil War. He also illustrated numerous books, including an edition of Longfellow’s poems. His development as a painter is unclear. At some point, he studied marine painting with James Hamilton, although one would never guess it from Squeaker’s Guzzle. Nothing of Hamilton’s rich atmosphere and frequent drama is found here.
The charm of Squeaker’s Guzzle is that of a chatty narrator who is loath to leave anything out of his story. That he is utterly unable to scale his figures correctly to the space or to one another only adds to the charm, because disproportion is the chief characteristic of this painting as a whole. The unclouded innocence of this leisured world ushers in America’s Gilded Age.
William Kloss
Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.