Merton Willmore Oil Painting "Low Tide at Rockport," circa 1950

Item Details

Merton Widdicombe Willmore (American, 1893-1974)
Low Tide at Rockport, circa 1950
Oil painting on canvas
Signed to the lower right

Merton Willmore was born in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Interested in art from a young age, he began his professional studies at 16 at the Lowell Institute in Boston. He learned engineering drawing at night and worked during the days as a draftsman for machinery patent attorneys. He later studied at the Fenway School of Illustration. He joined the army in World War I, where he was assigned to draw maps. After the war, Willmore studied landscape painting under Frank Meyers, John F. Carlson, and Lester Stevens, among other noted artists, and was encouraged to develop an interpretive painting style that diverged from his training in drafting. Professionally, he worked in the Artistic and Creative Director positions at Griffith Stillings Press Company, the Rust Craft Greeting Card Company, and the Cincinnati-based Gibson Card Company, where he worked for 35 years. In Cincinnati, he was approached by Walter Closson to hold his first one-man show at Closson’s Galleries. Willmore was a member of the American Watercolor Society, the Cincinnati Art Club, the McDowell Society, and the Salmagundi Club in New York. His work was exhibited throughout Cincinnati, as well as in the American Watercolor Society juried and traveling shows, at the Salmagundi Club, and at the Maine Art Gallery, where he spent his summers painting the Northeast coastal landscapes.

Condition

- wear to edges of frame; surface wear present to painting; slight billow to canvas.

Dimensions

- measures frame; canvas measures 40" W x 30" H.

Item #

ITMG876727