THAYER BERRY, CARROLL (1886-1978)

"Rockport - Winter - Maine Coast" (1966)
woodcut
30 x 34cm
signed lower right
*commissioned for Down East Magazine, 1966
*private collection, Sydney
 
Berry was a respected American Printmaker. He was born and raised in New Gloucester, Maine, where his father was a dairy farmer. In 1910, Berry joined an architectural firm in Portland, Oregon, and was sent to Panama to participate in the construction of the Panama Canal. While in the U.S., he began to take art classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Government officials were so impressed by his artistic abilities that they commissioned him instead to paint a series of large murals of the Canal’s construction for the walls of the administrative building. When Berry returned to the U.S. in 1915, he moved to New York, where he earned his living as a commercial artist. Soon after, he married, and he and his wife raised a son. In 1917, when the U.S. entered World War I, he volunteered for service. He was commissioned as a first lieutenant, and assigned to camouflage. After World War II, he moved to Rockport, Maine, where he owned a studio for the rest of his life. It was there, equipped with a 19th-Century printing press, that Berry perfected his printmaking skills, in the process of which he made use of wood engraving, woodcut and linoleum block. This woodcut print was commissioned for the cover of Down East Magazine in 1966!!