Biography
Nationally acclaimed artist Claude Montgomery was born in Portland, Maine in 1912. A portrait painter, landscape artist, watercolorist and etcher, his watercolors of quintessential Maine were regular covers of Down East Magazine, his paintings hung in prominent clubs and private parlors, and his commissioned portraits of statesmen and presidents were displayed prominently in state houses, universities and offices headquarters. His work was influenced by John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer and for a time he studied under Winslow Homer protege, Alexander Bower.
His children and grandchildren are collaborating on what they see to be a very important effort to illuminate Montgomery’s legacy as they organize the incredibly rich archive of paintings, newspaper clippings, and photographs of the artist at work, his subjects and his family life as he traveled around the world with his wife, Louise–the key player in getting commissions and selling his works–and his three children. His is a story of a Maine artist’s life in the ‘30s through the ‘80s when an artist could make a living selling portraits while also capturing every-day life in his water colors of fishing villages. The artist died in 1990 in Portland, Maine at the Friendship House, a shelter for unhoused men that he and Louise founded, ran and even lived in with their guests. Having lived a full life, quintessential of both an artist and a Mainer, he died at the age of 78.
During his life, Montgomery maintained studios on the Maine Coast in Georgetown and Tulsa, Oklahoma. He also painted extensively in Europe, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands. It is his coastal Maine studio, which he built with a friend and his son, Bruce, in 1960 that his granddaughter, Christine Beebe is converting back into its original purpose – an artist’s studio for artists. The studio is virtually untouched, with the same classic books in the massive library, the same vaulted ceiling stretching towards the wall of Northern facing windows, the same antiques, and even the same crystal glassware and silver serving platters in the cupboards.
