Exhibition of Paintings of Vincent A. Hartgen

July 15, 1955 - August 30, 1955

A Professor of Art and Head of the Art Department at the University of Maine, Vincent Hartgen has won numerous awards and prizes for his paintings of the Maine scenery.  His paintings now hang in many of the country’s private and public collections.  Art critic and collector Mr. George Binet, of New York, wrote of his work: “Hartgen is fortunate in so far as his intensely enjoys the unsurpassable beauties of our visual world, and the effects of our troubles times are reflected in his work, not through the channels of self-analytical speculations, but submitted by magic transformation into visual presentations of dramatic forces of nature. The struggle of light and shade, the tragedy of tormented shapes are powerfully contrasted with the olympic calm of nature’s eternal miracles. Prophecies in art are seldom fortunate. But in Hartgen’s case it seems safe to predict that he will be gradually recognized as one of our leading and most beloved watercolor artists.