Status of Original Painting – For Sale

All prices are in Canadian dollars

Size: 13.25 x 22.5  inches

Price: Inquire

Medium: Watercolour on 300 lb Arches

Description:

Lighthouses have a long history in Newfoundland, lighting the way for marine vessels during darkness, and sounding  the way during intense fog. The setting is Cape Spear, which is the easternmost point of North America, and located about 20 minutes outside downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland. There are two lighthouses depicted here, with the older one from 1836 front and center. It is the oldest lighthouse in Newfoundland and now a museum dedicated to the Cantwell family that lived there and kept the light going for 150 years.  It is up high on a rocky cliff. Just to the right of it in this view is the tip of the newer and taller lighthouse, built in 1955. It is far downslope and looks like a small structure within the picket fencing. But the new lighthouse is quite tall, and for reference I include a photo of it below.

Cape Spear is a mandatory excursion for anyone visiting St. John’s. It’s a national historic site with the lighthouses and old World War II cannons and bunkers that defended the harbour against U-Boats (another photo below shows one of the cannons, with the new lighthouse in the distance). Those bunkers and the rocky landscape are used in the summer for an annual outdoor festival of Shakespearean plays, called Shakespeare by the Sea. It’s a great place to stand and watch the whales cavort offshore, or see glorious sunrises and sunsets (there are special gatherings at the solstices). Plaques describe how it is the easternmost point of continental North America, as distinguished from Cape St. Charles in Labrador, depicted in my painting Fisherman’s Blues, which is the easternmost point of mainland North America.

I will probably do other paintings of Cape Spear to capture the bunkers and the new lighthouse dwarfing the old one.

My thanks to Lisa Samways who suggested the title.