Lumberman’s Museum event salutes famous artists with Patten connection

    Patten Lumbermen’s Museum will host an “Evening at the Museum” on Thursday, Aug. 28 from 5-8 p.m. with presentations on two well-known artists with local ties — Carl Sprinchorn (1887-1971) and Marsden Hartley (1877-1943).
    Chris Huntington and Charlotte McGill will speak about Artist, Carl Sprinchorn. Born in 1887 in Sweden, he came to New York at the age of 16 in 1903. Between 1910 and 1920 he spent a fair amount of time in Monson, where he had family connections. In 1937, arriving quite by chance in Patten, he was befriended by Chief Game Warden, Caleb Scribner. Mr. Scribner is one of the founders of the Patten Lumbermen’s Museum and many of his water colors hang in the museum’s Reception Center today.
    Sprinchorn set up a studio in Caleb’s barn adjoining his residence on Main Street in Patten. Caleb took Carl on many of his trips while on duty as a Game Warden to the surrounding countryside and introduced him to many people including the Crommett family who lived a mile above Shin Pond Village. The Crommett’s farm was a lumbermen’s way station for many years and this is where Sprinchorn lived from 1939 to 1941. He later spent a number of months in Nat Hudson’s trappers’ cabin on the east branch of the Penobscot River and the better part of seven years at Zen Harvey’s “Shin Pond House” painting scenes of life as a woodsman.
    Sprinchorn left the Patten area and Maine for the last time in the summer of 1952. His paintings can be seen in at least seven art museums in Maine. There have been special exhibitions of his work at the Oqunquit and Bates art museums.
    “Katahdin Lake — A Painters Paradise,” a 40-minute film about the history of the artists who painted at Katahdin Lake from 1852 to the present and includes several of America’s most famous painters including. Marsden Hartley, will be shown during “A Night at the Museum.”
    Hartley was born in Lewiston and died in Corea. He was a world-wide traveler and spent much of his life in Europe.
    After the film, Artist Chris Huntington and his wife, Charlotte McGill, author’s of the film, will give a brief talk about an unknown fact that Hartley made a visit to Patten in October of 1939 in the company of Caleb Scribner whom Mr. Huntington knew well. This visit to Patten took place prior to Hartley’s historic visit to Katahdin Lake.
    In May 2008, Sotheby’s in New York auctioned a 1914 Marsden Hartley oil painting for over $6 million, a record price for a work of art by an American Modernist artist.
    The Lumbermen’s Museum is located at 61 Shin Pond Road in Patten. For more information call 528-2650 or visit their Web site at www.lumbermensmuseum.org.