{"id":16586,"date":"2019-08-28T17:18:12","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T21:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=16586"},"modified":"2020-05-01T11:09:17","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T15:09:17","slug":"pine-tree-bohemia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/pine-tree-bohemia\/","title":{"rendered":"Pine Tree Bohemia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 500px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23f5f5f5&amp;backgroundColorFullscreen=%23f5f5f5&amp;d=september_2019_pm_flipbook&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;hideShareButton=true&amp;pageNumber=43&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Portrait of the Industrialist as a Young Man<\/b><br \/>\nCharles Deering\u2014the Maine artist you never heard of.<\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>By Colin w. Sargent<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-16603\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/charles-deering-by-john-s-sargent-young-228x300.jpg\" alt=\"charles deering by john s sargent young\" width=\"228\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/charles-deering-by-john-s-sargent-young-228x300.jpg 228w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/charles-deering-by-john-s-sargent-young-200x263.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/charles-deering-by-john-s-sargent-young-266x350.jpg 266w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/charles-deering-by-john-s-sargent-young.jpg 729w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 228px) 100vw, 228px\" \/>A<\/span><span class=\"s1\">s a dashing young naval officer and budding painter, <strong>Charles Deering<\/strong> (1852-1927) of South Paris, Maine, swept through Europe with some fast company\u2013painter <strong>Anders Zorn<\/strong>, sculptor <strong>Augustus Saint-Gaudens<\/strong>, and painter <strong>John Singer Sargent<\/strong>. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">These pals laughed together, drank together, critiqued each other\u2019s work, and traveled together. Were they living a charmed life? Certainly they were never going to get old. During an interlude, Sargent dashed off a romantic oil painting of Deering (a Kents Hill School grad who ranked second in the Class of 1873 at the U. S. Naval Academy) <i>a la boh\u00e8me<\/i>. This mysterious likeness\u2013or at least an image of it\u2013was reproduced as part of a major Sargent retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2015, but even the curator suggested the location of the early oil re<\/span><span class=\"s1\">mained a mystery.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Until now. The oil of Charles in 1876 \u201cis owned by the Deering family,\u201d says curator Stephanie Herdrich at The Met. \u201cDuring a show last year at the Art Institute of Chicago, the portrait was unearthed from deep from among the Deering family and was exhibited as part of \u2018an anonymous loan.\u2019\u201d To be accepted in a crowd that included Zorn, Saint-Gaudens, and Sargent, \u201cDeering obviously had a lot of talent, but there may have been tension from his family\u201d to abandon painting and make his mark in business.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">When Deering returned to the U.S., he switched careers. Business agreed with him. With a little help from J.P. Morgan, Charles shook the pillars of the aggie universe when he became the chairman of the board of International Harvester. Today, he\u2019s in the pantheon of influential business people born in Maine\u2013not for his painting but for his financial artistry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-16605\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/deering-2-229x300.jpg\" alt=\"deering 2\" width=\"229\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/deering-2-229x300.jpg 229w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/deering-2-200x262.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/deering-2-268x350.jpg 268w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/deering-2.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 229px) 100vw, 229px\" \/>Many plutocrats are changed by their wealth, but Charles never lost his boho world view. He never forgot his old friends. He sponsored shows for them, collected their work, bailed them out, encouraged them, kept in touch. He became an internationally renowned art collector and kept his collection in Maricel, a castle-like \u201cart pal<\/span><span class=\"s1\">ace\u201d he built near Barcelona, Spain. He hosted his buddies\u2019 visits there and to the U.S. across many years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Forty-one years after they first met, Sargent visited Deering at The Deering Estate\u2013his mansion in Miami\u2013and painted a new, spectacular canvas of his dear friend. It, too, was among the starring paintings at the Sargent retrospective at The Met. After the show, the portrait disappeared from public view into the hands of a private collector. But the sense of friendship that vibrates in every brush stroke was so strong it startled viewers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Charles Deering was \u201ca cousin [to the Deerings of Portland], of course, but at sixth cousin three-times removed\u2013not very close,\u201d says Deering family member <strong>Nick Noyes<\/strong>, curator of library collections at Maine Historical Society. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Just a little more proof that as Maine goes, so goes the universe.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Deering\u2019s lost years have found a new audience.<br \/>\nBy Colin W. Sargent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[433,432,127],"class_list":["post-16586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-artist","tag-charles-deering","tag-maine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16586"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18572,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16586\/revisions\/18572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}