– Jack Kerouac
When I first launched this blogspot back in December 2008, and it was barely a week old, I began receiving a number of inquiries regarding the significance of its title. Why was I looking toward Portugal? And from what vantage point? Both good questions and the answer was no big mystery.
In reply to these early queries I pointed out that I had been gravitating to the coast of Maine since the late 1980s, and during these trips I often found myself standing on that rocky shoreline, looking out to sea and pondering what lies beyond the far horizon. Gazing in a general easterly direction from the Maine coast, you will see nothing but the rolling expanse of the Gulf of Maine toward the southernmost extension of Nova Scotia. Yet, if you continue across the Atlantic you will eventually arrive on the northern shores of Portugal somewhere near Oporto. Doing this I was constantly reminded of Jack Kerouac’s observations when he stared out across the Atlantic from the shores of Long Island (he naturally gravitated to America’s two coasts) – “this last lip of American land.” Writing in On The Road (1957): “Here I was at the end of America . . . no more land . . ., and now there was nowhere to go but back.” Doing this I guess we are reminded of our limitations, but we are also offered a hint of what might be if we only choose to look beyond those far horizons. I could have been satisfied with “Looking Toward Nova Scotia,” but I liked to think there was far more to consider beyond.
As it turns out, an artist by the name of Bo Bartlett gave a name to what I had been doing all these years. At the time I made this discovery Bartlett divided his time between the coast of Maine and Puget Sound near Seattle. Bartlett, like Kerouac, is drawn to America’s two coasts. (He has since moved from the Seattle area to his hometown of Columbus, Georgia,) “Still Point,” his summer home and studio are situated on Wheaton Island which forms the small village harbor on Matinicus Island. He refers to the seaward side of his island as “the Portugal side,” and so I attribute “Looking Toward Portugal” to him. It seems only fair.
Bartlett and I, however, are not the only ones who have over the years been looking eastward from America toward Portugal. I was recently doing some photo research online and I came across a collection of hand-colored postcards dating from the 1920s depicting various scenes on Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. One of them immediately caught my eye . . . a view of beach dunes covered in vegetation with the sea beyond. “Looking Toward Portugal from the Eastern Shore of Nantucket Island, Mass.” is printed across the bottom of the card. The Eastern Shore of Nantucket includes several of the island’s more remote beaches.
The scene depicted on this postcard is more than likely Siaconset - known locally as Sconset - Beach which is located at the eastern most tip of Nantucket Island some six miles from the island village. It is noted for its broad beaches bordering dunes and sandy bluffs. Surf can be heavy with strong currents.
Further research turned up a postcard dealer on the island who sold me a pristine copy of this very card. When it arrived a few days later I felt compelled to learn more about the card and the person who created it. It turns out to be a fascinating story. This postcard is a facsimile of a hand-painted original black and photograph taken by H. [Henry] Marshall Gardiner who was born in Canada in 1884 and who circa 1890 moved with his family to Detroit, Michigan. His father, William Henry Gardiner, established a photographic studio there, and a short time later opened a second studio on Michigan’s Mackinaw Island to cater to the summer tourist trade. The family bought a winter home in Daytona, Florida, in 1904, where the elder Gardiner marketed photographs of Florida to the ever growing tourist market there.
The younger Gardiner followed in his father’s footsteps at a relatively early age and learned many of his photographic techniques from him. One major difference, however, was his use of more advanced gelatin dry plate technology whereas his father generally used wet collodian negatives. Later in his career he turned to rolled film negatives which were cheaper and easier to use. He also saw the efficacy of operating his own successful photographic business centered on the tourist on Mackinaw Island and in Florida. He assumed control of his father’s business in Daytona in October 1935 upon his father’s death.
Gardiner also traveled to Bermuda early in his career where he produced a series of beautiful hand-tinted photographs which he sold to island tourists. This distinctive technique was popularized in the United States by Wallace Nutting, the father of early 20th century hand colored photographs. Gardiner soon began to produce hand-tinted colored photographs of Mackinac Island and Florida, and the technique became his true photographic legacy to this day.
Gardiner also traveled to Nantucket Island, situated off the coast of Massachuset’s Cape Cod, around 1910 and this discovery served as a key influence on his evolution as a photographer and the development of hand-tinted photography as an art form. The island was still very much a rural backwater with a year round population just over 2500, no where near enough to sustain photographic business despite his efforts to make it work. But he never lost his interest in and love for this island and over the next three decades, until his death in 1942, he continued to document Nantucket’s architecture, as well as the countryside, its beaches and seascapes, and island inhabitants, producing framed and unframed hand-tinted color photographs. Smaller postcard facsimiles were produced by the Detroit Publishing Company using their patented "Phostint" printing process.
It was not long before Gardiner’s photographs were becoming collector items, especially those of Nantucket scenes, and as time has passed they are scarce and command premium prices. Gardiner's postcards are widely collected. Unlike his hand-painted photographs which can command a premium price today, his Nantucket colored postcards (and even a few of his more rare black and white postcards) are much easier to find on the market and they are more affordable. Approximately three dozen of his best Nantucket images have been collected by the Nantucket Historical Association and are the subject of H. Marshall Gardiner’s Nantucket Postcards 1910-1940, edited by his daughter, Geraldine Gardiner Salisbury, in 1995.
Looking at this postcard and thinking about Gardiner’s photographic career I am reminded of “The Rest of the Story,” a weekday ABC Radio Networks program hosted by Paul Harvey beginning in May 1976. They were interesting factual revelations on a wide variety of subjects and people which were not revealed until the end of the program which concluded with Harvey pausing then saying “And now you know the rest of the story.” I wonder if perhaps this image was the inspiration for Bo Bartlett’s reference to the eastward view from the “Portugal side” of Wheaton Island of the coast of Maine. I am quite certain the views are similar regardless. This same Maine coast has become for me a place of solitude, solace, and inspiration.
Looking out to sea from “the Portugal side” of my own life, I ponder what lies beyond that meeting of water and sky. I realize that my grand search will never be over. Certainly not in my lifetime. I will always return to that “last lip of American land.”
And now you know the rest of the story.
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