Beautiful Maine Harbors

Dinghies at the Dock  (Tenants Harbor) 12"x12" oil on canvas - available here

Maine has so many beautiful harbors. It doesn't matter whether you arrive by car or by boat, there is always something to see. There are several Maine towns that I first visited by boat, which is kind of cool. Tenants Harbor and Stonington come to mind. There are three dimensions to the beauty of these harbors; nature, buildings, and boats. All of these appeal to me, and the combinations can be quite stunning!

One of my favorites is Tenants Harbor on the southwestern shore of Penobscot Bay. It’s a quiet small town with a big wide harbor. As you come into the harbor you pass Southern Island, owned by the Wyeth family, where many of Jamie Wyeth’s paintings were created. There’s a big lobstering business in Tenants, and it's long been the home of a classic lobster shack with excellent lobster rolls. For many years it was Cod End but it's now owned by Luke’s Lobster who have maintained the original feel and good food. You can take a walk through the town with its classic Maine houses, but the harbor is the gem; lobster boats, many pleasure boats, little sailboats coming and going. It’s a delightful place to be in the summer.

View From Round Pond  8"x10" oil on canvas - available here

Round Pond is another Maine harbor town that I love, on the western side of Muscongus Bay. It’s a pretty little town with an excellent restaurant. They let us paint in their yard looking out over the harbor. There's also a lovely church, and of course, lobster boats, and sailboats.

Merchant's Row   (from Stonington) 8"x8" oil on canvas board - available here

Another harbor town that I love is Stonington, on Deer Isle on the eastern side of Penobscot Bay. South of Stonington is one of the most beautiful pieces of water in the state of Maine, an area of beautiful unpopulated islands, called Merchant’s Row. The scenery is stunning. Stonington is a bigger town than Tenants Harbor and Round Pond, with a number of restaurants and shops, an opera house, and the ferry to Isle a Haut. It's a beautiful place, with lovely architecture, and scenery that has been painted by many people.

Paintings in this post are available in the Downeast Collection, here.