Join us for our third annual Eric Pape fine art exhibit, featuring works previously unseen since the artist’s death in 1938.
Including Newly Restored Chapter Initials for Lew Wallace’s’The Fair God’ from Pape’s Locked Studio in Annisquam!
Join us as we kick off our 2025 season with this extraordinary exhibit of works rarely seen by one of Boston and Cape Ann’s golden age illustrators and painters.
At the time of the exhibit, it is expected to be the largest collection of Pape’s artworks on public display anywhere in the world, many of which haven’t been publicly seen in nearly a century. The artwork is primarily on loan from the private collection of avid Pape collector and biographer Dr. Gregory Conn, the world’s leading expert on the 20th-century artist.
This year’s exhibition came together serendipitously when Thomas Meeks, curator of the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Indiana, engaged Dr. Conn for verification of several original illustrations from Wallace’s 1873 publication “The Fair God.” These artworks were in Pape’s famed Annisquam “Locked Studio” and had remained in the condition in which they were when the studio was reopened in the late 1980s. This past winter, Dr. Conn sponsored their subsequent restoration, conservation, and re-framing. This exhibit marks their public debut since the restorations, which coincides with Dr. Conn’s newest book, a hardcover, bound catalog of this exhibition, which is, named after Pape’s most renowned illustrated deluxe edition of Wallace’s novels.
In addition, an important early fine art painting from Pape’s 1890 trip to Egypt will be on loan from a private collector, “The Last Soldier,” a painting of the Sphinx by moonlight The remaining works chosen for this exhibition include, but are not limited to oil copies of several famous large-scale pastel portraits by Pape, which are displayed in Dr. Conn’s private collection. Since the works of art remain in their original, unfixed state, they are unsuitable for international transit and exhibition. Alberto Romero, a popular sculptor in Spain who created the exhibition’s central portrait of Eric Pape contributes five modern portraits, also on loan from Dr. Conn’s private collection. Romero´s work has received widespread attention both in Spain and in Central America and can be found in many noted collections.
Additionally, attendees can view the three Pape paintings on permanent display in their respective galleries within the Museum, including Pape’s sole surviving mural, “The Wireless Naval Battle of Gloucester Bay.”
Cape Ann Community 