Draft:Don Gorvett

Gorvett in 2016.

Donald Neil Gorvett (born August 1, 1949) is an American artist who specializes in printmaker, painting, and drawing. Gorvett is best known for his reduction woodcut printmaking. Gorvett lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and has galleries in Gloucester and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His focus is on maritime vistas, and is heavily influenced by his love of history, music, and the activities of harbor towns.

Gorvett's woodcuts are in many notable permanent collections of both public and private institutions, including as the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts; Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts; Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockport, Maine; the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University, England; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, Maine; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts; and Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts.

Early Life

A young Don Gorvett on his way to paint by the beach.

Gorvett was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1949. As a young boy Gorvett lived in Cambridge and Somerville, before moving to Burlington, Massachusetts. While living in Burlington, Gorvett formed a close relationship with his high school art teacher, Elinor Marvin. She privately tutored Gorvett in drawing, graphic arts, and theatrical design, and became a life-long friend.

While still in high school, Gorvett benefitted from the patronage of retired psychologist, Annabelle Lewis, who, along with Elinor Marvin, introduced the young artist to Ogunquit, Maine. Lewis provided Gorvett with a one-room cabbin off Berwick Road, which he occupied intermittently from 1968 to 1984.

Gorvett earned a Junior Ford Fellowship at the School at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and graduated in 1972. While at the School, Gorvett spent much of his time studying and sketching the Boston working waterfront (long before its present state of gentrification). It was here that he developed a lifelong fascination with industrial and commercial maritime subjects—subjects which continue to pervade his work.

Career

Early Career (1972 –1990)

After graduating from art school, Gorvett was introduced by his older brother Ralph to Mary Buswell, widow of Leslie Buswell and heiress of Stillington Hall. Here, close to Gloucester Massachusetts, Gorvett lived as artist in residence. Attached to the large, Jacobean-style estate was a private theatre, where Gorvett lived in the dressing rooms. It was in this theatre, above the stage, that Gorvett set up his first etching press and began to experiment with woodcut printmaking, inspired by Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

Living in close proximity to Gloucester's working waterfront marina, Gorvett also began to hone his focus on maritime vistas. Here, he created a series of dry point etchings of the harbor, and began to experiment with large-scale woodcuts.

1990–Present

Gorvett returned Ogunquit in 1990, and reunited with his mentor, Elinor Marvin. He operated a series of galleries in Ogunquit at various locations. He also opened a gallery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 2006. His Portsmouth gallery and studio was established on the still-active working waterfront, overlooking the Piscataqua River and its busy commercial shipping lane.

Currently, Gorvett operates two galleries, one in Portsmouth and the other in the historic Beacon Marine Basin, overlooking Gloucester Harbor. Gorvett remains a full-time working artist.