LB2017.19.190

LB2017.19.190

Inside the abandoned Hoffses farmhouse, Andrew Wyeth sits in an old rocking chair in the dilapidated room shown in LB2017.19.174, painting on the canvas propped across his knees. The photographer appeared to be standing in an entryway; daylight filters through a curtain covering one of the sidelights at left and reveals a birch log wedged against the door to bar entry (the two men climbed in through an unlatched window), and objects lie on the floor at one corner of the frame. The shirt or jacket hanging on the wall may have been abadoned by the former occupant or hung there by Wyeth or Ruohomaa for effect. The wallpaper in the two rooms is peeling and water stained. Evidence of age, damage, and the contrasting light and gloom create the forlorn, ghostly atmosphere which attracted Andrew Wyeth to paint scenes in the house. Ruohomaa met American realist painter Andrew Wyeth in 1947 through their mutual acquaintance, the sculptor George Curtis. The two had a long friendship which sometimes led to unusual adventures and some notable creative collaborations, as in this group of photographs. In the summer of 1951, Wyeth coaxed Ruohomaa to explore an ancient house which had been occupied by generations of the Hoffses near Waldoboro, Maine up until 1941. Christian Hoffses, who built the colonial with lumber sawn on the property sometime around 1800, was a Revolutionary War veteran. Much later, after the last occupant (unidentified) died, his surviving relatives locked the door and left the interior untouched: the house was furnished, beds were made, dishes lay on the kitchen table, and unburned firewood sat in the woodstove. Wyeth had visited the house previously and, knowing something about Ruohomaa's aesthetic leanings as a photographer, realized he'd appreciate its air of somber mystery: the sharp contrast of light and shadow, the antiquity of cobwebs and dust, the sense of a life suspended in time. As with the Louds Island hearse escapade (see LB2017.19.40972-LB2017.19.41321), he took these photographs as part of a spontaneous and offbeat adventure: it was not a Black Star assignment. However, some of them were used subsequently in a Life magazine article. [Ruohomaa, Kosti and Bourges, Fernand. (1957, July 27). Artist Paints a Ghostly House. Life, 80-83.]