The Ogunquit Museum of American Art will exhibit “Edward Hopper: The Ogunquit Paintings” July 1-October 15.

During the early years of the Twentieth Century, Ogunquit’s influential art colony and the incomparable beauty of the Maine coastline drew many famous artists to paint in the small fishing village. One of the best known was Edward Hopper (1882-1967), who spent the summers of 1914 and 1915 painting that coastline and examples of Ogunquit architecture. The artist produced only a hand full of paintings during those two summers; five of his best are featured in this exhibition.

Hopper loved Maine. He returned to the state on numerous occasions, spending the summers of 1916-1919 painting on Monhegan Island. He also visited Eastport, Bangor and Rockland in 1926; Cape Elizabeth in 1927, 1929 and 1933; Portland in 1927; Pemaquid Point in 1929; and Ogunquit again in 1928 and 1933.

Although Ogunquit had been an artist’s destination since Charles H. Woodbury opened his summer art school in 1898, and Hamilton Easter Field founded The Ogunquit School of Painting and Sculpture in 1911, the village received renewed attention when a 1913 article in American Art News touted Ogunquit as “adjacent to Prout’s Neck where Winslow Homer lived his hermit’s life for so many years.” This article, together with praise from Hopper friends such as painters Bernard Karfiol, Robert Henri and George Bellows, may have been the reason Hopper chose the village for a summer retreat.

Hopper spent July and part of August 1914 painting in Ogunquit, staying at a boarding house on Shore Road. Among the other lodgers was an art student named Jo Nivison, who would become Mrs Edward Hopper in 1924. While Hopper returned to Ogunquit during the summers of 1915, 1928 and 1933, it was during the summer of 1914 that he produced his best-known and most important Ogunquit-related paintings.

“Road in Maine,” depicting a stretch of Shore Road in front of the present Ogunquit Museum of American Art, was first exhibited in the autumn of 1914 at New York’s Montress Gallery, and was Hopper’s first opportunity to show in a commercial gallery.

“Sea at Ogunquit,” also completed in 1914, was exhibited in 1917 at the “First Annual Exhibition at the American Society of Independent Artists” in New York City. The inclusion of these two Ogunquit works in those exhibits was a powerful incentive for Hopper eventually to discontinue his illustration work and to concentrate on his own painting.

The OMAA is grateful to the Whitney Museum of American Art for making possible the return of this rare group of painting to Ogunquit for the first time in nearly a century.

The OMAA is at 543 Shore Road. Hours are Monday-Saturday, 10:30 am to 5 pm, and Sunday, 2 to 5 pm. Admission is $5. For information, www.Ogunquitmuseum.org or 207-646-4909.