A dozen artworks by the outstanding 19th century American painter Winslow Homer have been donated to the Portland Museum of Art by Bill and Bernadette Berger’s Berger Collection Educational Trust,the Maine museum announced yesterday. The gift strengthens the museum’s collection of Homer works as well as Homer’s studio in Prouts Neck, Maine, where the artist lived and worked until his death in 1910.
“We are excited to welcome these works of art back to Maine,” museum Director Mark H.C. Bessire said in a prepared statement. “There is no better home for the works of Winslow Homer than in the region that meant so much to him.
Mr. Berger was the great-grandson of one of the founders of the Colorado National Bank. He “started one of the first mutual funds in Colorado and later sold his fund company and used the proceeds to establish a vast collection of British art,” The New York Times reported when he died in 1999.
The gift includes three small oil paintings from the 1870s as well as drawings and water colors from the 1860s to 1890s. They feature agrarian scenes as well as renderings of fishermen and boats.
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