An inscription on the back of On the Moorings Maine, probably the artist’s, notes the location of this view as New Harbor, ME, a spot frequently visited by Frederick Detwiller. The artist studied as an architect and is especially attentive here to the design and engineering features of the harbor—the warehouses on stilts and the masts and riggings of sailboats.
No documentation has been found to explain how this piece entered the collection of the Gallup Art Center. A working hypothesis is that Detwiller was an associate of fellow NYC-based artist Albert Lorey Groll, who is known to have reached out to his professional network for artwork contributions in the early 1940s to help establish a permanent art museum in Gallup (which never came to fruition).
