In one of Jamie Wyethʼs signature interminglings of the human and animal worlds, the present work depicts two gulls in the living room of the artistʼs house on Monhegan Island. Maine. Wyeth has lived much of his life on the Maine coast and has spent countless hours observing bird habits and behavior, developing what curator Victoria Woodhall has called a “kinship and keen understanding” with these creatures.1

Representing the physical attributes of one of his favorite subjects with remarkable accuracy, Jamie Wyeth also catches their idiosyncratic -- and almost human -- behavior in Gulls of Monhegan #1. Noted ornithologist Richard Harris Polodsky has remarked that Wyethʼs gulls “are very much alive” and “resonate beautifully with what I know to be true about gulls – that securing food, by any means, is the epicenter of their highly social world.”2 True to form, the two large gulls in the present work traipse across the floor of the seemingly deserted house, scavenging beneath the table for a potential meal. Although the house -- with its fresh tablecloth, decorative floorcovering, and intensely colored pottery and glass – is most certainly inhabited, we see no sign of the owners, and the birds appear to be taking over, imbuing the scene with some thought-provoking narrative possibilities.

Gulls of Monhegan #1 is included in the database of the artistʼs work being compiled by the Wyeth Center at the William A. Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine.

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1 Gulls, Ravens and a Vulture: The Ornithological Paintings of Jamie Wyeth (Rockland, Maine: Farnsworth Art Museum, 2005), p. 7.
2 “Gulls: Perfect Pirates,” in Gulls, Ravens and a Vulture (2005), p. 23.