Eight Bells

A true story by Erick Sahler

In the age of sail, time on ships was kept by a 30-minute hourglass.

Once depleted, the hourglass was flipped and a bell was rung. Each following half hour, the bell was rung one additional time, until four hours had passed and the bell was rung eight times. Then the process started anew.

Seaman on duty for a four-hour shift associated eight bells with “the end of the watch.”

Lacking modern technology, ships at sea would take sightings of the sun and the horizon each day at noontime to recalibrate the flipping of the hourglass.

Winslow Homer depicted sailors making a reading with a sextant in his 1887 painting “Eight Bells.” Homer, arguably the first great American painter, worked from a studio in Prout’s Neck, Maine, and regularly painted rural and nautical scenes.

As a young illustrator N.C. Wyeth was influenced by Homer’s work and at age 24 painted “The Scythers,” in which farmhands harvest a crop with long blades. The timeless scene would not be out of place in any collection of Homer’s work.

Wyeth visited Maine in 1910 and fell for the coastal village of Port Clyde. Around 1920, he purchased an old sea captain’s cottage on Horse Point Road and workers began a 10-year restoration of the dwelling. Once complete, Wyeth named his summer home “Eight Bells” and a print of the Homer painting was hung inside.

For Wyeth, Eight Bells was a retreat, not only from the hot, humid summers in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, but also from his busy schedule and endless deadlines. It represented “the end of the watch.” Of it, he said, “one of my great and blessed relaxations is to concentrate among any chance detail associated with remote Port Clyde and the sublime sea that bathes its shores.”

Wyeth died in an accident in 1945, but Eight Bells remained in his family and has become part of the Wyeth lore.

Scant information about the property exists in print or online, and museum staff at the Farnsworth in Rockland and the Brandywine in Chadds Ford reveal little about it, most likely to protect the privacy of the Wyeths. Knowing its location was on Horse Point Road near Hupper Point, I scoured satellite images looking for the long narrow dwelling and its distinctive dormers. It wasn’t difficult to spot. In addition to the house, the art studio Wyeth created in a converted boathouse still hugs to shore.

We arrived at Eight Bells early in the morning. My plan was simply to see it — the house and the views taken in by the Wyeth clan — and move on. A drive-by would have quenched my desires. But the paved road ended abruptly just before we reached the site. I could identify the roofline of the house from the distance, but Private Property signs were posted and I did not wish to raise the ire of its residents or their neighbors.

I had a quick look, grabbed one shot on my phone and hustled back into the car.

Then I noticed a sign marking a public walking trail that ran from the road down to the shore, along the edge of the Wyeth property.

I crept along in the wet grass, separated from the house by a mere 100 or so feet and a few evergreen trees. Shooting more photos, I didn’t see any sign of occupancy with the exception of an SUV in the driveway.

At the shoreline, I found myself on a rocky beach. A small white dory floated in impossibly dark blue water under a crisp cerulean sky. I was just below Wyeth’s studio. The tide was out, and I could have walked farther along the beach. But I had seen what I came to see, plus a little more, and that was enough. I was energized by the experience.

Three weeks later, standing before Wyeth’s 1936 oil “Bright and Fair” at the Brandywine River Art Museum, my journey was complete. Perched on hillside and guarded by tall pines, Eight Bells gazes out to sea beneath an epic sky as only Wyeth could paint, with uplifted clouds and brilliant sunshine. It is truly stunning.

The old sea captain’s cottage that had restored a great artist and offered solitude and inspiration to America’s first family of art, had also touched me, if only for a moment.

I experienced what Wyeth had felt.

It was the end of the watch.

And it was good.

Tracy Sahler photo

We went to Port Clyde, Maine, on a quest to locate N.C. Wyeth’s summer home, “Eight Bells,” which we discovered just off a public hiking trail.

Standing before N.C. Wyeth’s “Bright and Fair,” my journey was complete.